


Fixed Point Upon the Sky

by Flowerflamestars



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adashi the Space Dads, Allura is a Goddess now, Always a paladin but not always Voltron, Beefy Keith, Blade of Marmora Keith, F/M, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, From Adashi pre-wedding lessons, Galra fairytales, Keith Knew First, Keith learned to dance by osmosis, Keith's giant sappy romantic heart, Lance thought the story was over, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Canon Compliant, Post War, Veronica McClain Brunch Queen, mutual historic past pining, older klance, the Abyss has CONSEQUENCES
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2020-10-25 02:50:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerflamestars/pseuds/Flowerflamestars
Summary: He was an ambassador that never left Earth, a hero who’d hung up his gun.Wasn’t that how stories were supposed to end?Peace, it turned out, was sad. Black and white to the war’s rainbow of color, and Lance hated himself for it.So he was convinced he was hallucinating, dreaming, finally lost his damned mind when what was unmistakably a lion crashed down from the night sky in front of him and purred, right deep down in his soul like liquid fire, like love: Leandro.Paladin. Our paladin needs us.





	1. That Dreaming Light

The thing about watching the lions leave was this: no matter how soul crushing it had been to face another loss, it had felt right. Just as right as swallowing down tears and nodding instead as Allura strode away from life to take Lotors hands. 

And so the universe had been saved between the alchemy of the two heirs to a ten thousand year old war. 

Lance, the child of island heat and two parents who’d loved each other like the world was ending long before it did, believed in stories. Sometimes, the distant, fairytale quality of the war’s implosion made it easier. After all, the lions weren’t destroyed, just gone. Allura wasn’t dead- but she’d yielded her quintessence to the universe and became something more, something different in it’s place. 

But some nights Lance woke up covered in sweat, sure it was blood. Keiths blood, from pulling him from a Galra cell, tortured and starved in the week it had taken Lance to find him. Pidge, broken beneath the onslaught of a robeast without the shell of her lion around her. Hunk, dying. Shiro, dead again. Reaching for the lion bond after all those years was still an instinct, and it hurt. 

No purr like love from Red, not the distant hum of Black, the warm humor of Blue.

Not a paladin anymore. Lance got used to having a soul that was crushed around the edges. 

It helped that there was just so much to do after the war was over. He’d tried at first to get away from it all- back to his family, back to Cuba where the oceans felt nothing like he’d found on any other planet. There were new baby cousins to cry over and his mama to hug eight thousand times. 

Keith had even remembered the old promise to come visit.

They’d been on Velkor, an ocean planet with close ties to Olkarion. Not mermaids again- but an entire civilization built under the water by beings who couldn’t breathe through it, but buried their research and vast knowledge under sunset colored waves.

By the third day of diplomatic negations and Lance was tired. Allura had hammered in that incredible longevity of the Velkorians made them slow to action; but after days of being underwater with only ocean silence and low humming voices that accompanied the slow blink of brilliant silver eyes, Lance disagreed.

They weren’t dragging their feet- they were peaceful.

All they wanted was their knowledge and research, the silver-gold bubbles of their cities beneath the waves to remain untouched. They drifted- just like their damn ocean that was making him crazy. Pidge and Hunk, deep in taking readings had thrown four different theories at him for the composition of the water: pearlescent pinky-red, so concentrated they floated in it like the dead sea on earth, and to their delight, sweet.

And he just didn’t care. Because Lance couldn’t _float_.

He wanted to swim. The stretch and pull and exhaustion it would give him- real ocean currents, real ocean air that would taste like home. A salty sea before him would probably make him cry, but at least he’d sleep at night. 

Instead, after an entire day cycle- hours longer than the one in Castle, spent on nothing more than talking about ancient Velkorian poetry- Lance left. Walked straight out the guest wing, through the Palace of Heirophants, and out into the city. Took the very first automated lift he could find to the surface- no one noticed.

Of course, no one seeing him leave was ruined by running into Keith the second he broke the surface.

The city lifts took passengers a to a rock sandbar, the only sign of advanced life, or life at all for that matter gold orbs protruding from the beach for light- like miniature, snow globe versions of the civilization bellow.

Keith was leaning on one.

Tiredly, Lance took in the exhausted hunch of his newly broad shoulders, night dark hair falling over his jaw. And then Keith stuck out a leg and dipped a foot in the ocean. Boots and all, the goddamn savage. 

Lance was smiling and striding forward before he could think-_ maybe Keith wants to be alone too. Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Maybe we haven’t talked like actual human beings since Keith lost two years of his life and came back a stupid galactic supermodel._

Galactic_ ninja_ supermodel.

Who of course heard him coming. “Hey Lance,” Keith said, tired, violet eyes crinkling at the corners. He’d drawn back in his leg, the water leaving shimmers over the Marmora regulation, indestructible, forever silent space leather.

Who knew he was capable of missing go-go boots.

“Do you still even count as Blade if your shoes sparkle?”

An arched eyebrow was half the reply, which a year ago Lance would have called_ bitchy._ Now, he recognized Keith’s playful face, like a cat that didn’t want to admit it was pleased. “Maybe I like sparkles,” Keith replied dryly, toeing the water with the other boot. A spray of taffy water caught on the wind to hit them both. Keith held the pose for all of a heartbeat before wiping his face in horror. “This ocean is disgusting.”

Fondness was rising to choke him.

“Keith._ Keith_.” Lance started talking, glad the dark hid the sudden heat on his face, “It is the worst. Do you know I tried swimming? It made me sticky. Sticky- I had to wash my hair four times, was like taking a bath in strawberry soda.”

A raspy laugh, like the sharp clear sound had gone rusted spilled from Keith. “What the fuck, Lance.”

Admiration in the horror was enough for Lance to plop down on the sand beside him. He hadn’t talked to Keith in so long- longer for him- and it wasn’t like he was having much luck talking to _anyone_ lately. But he wanted to. “Do you remember that ocean on Nespax?”

“You mean the acid lake you thought was an ocean?” Keith said, still laughing.

He’d realize later, but it was the first in a long time someone pointing out how wrong he’d been didn’t make him feel small. Or stupid. It was just Keith, laughing with Lance, wearing that smile that changed his entire face. “If a lake is bigger than a continent it’s an inland sea!” Keith scoffed, tilted his head back against the gleaming gold. “Oceans in space are fucked.”

“Mermaids!”

“_Mind control_.”

“Sea dragon things!” “

You shot one”-

“Only after you cut off the big ones head!”

“It was trying to eat Pidge! For the last time”- Loudness bled right into laughter again, Keith huffing in a way that should never, ever have been cute.

“Dude,” What was Lance saying? He’d called Keith enough stupid things for a lifetime, and Keith had always fired right back, usually in the heat of battle. But that was before. Before Keith left and came back years ahead, before Lance called him cool and grizzled and- Lance didn’t know what to call him. 

He sounded like an asshole. “I miss saltwater.” Keith nodded.

Pidge called him Red. Shiro stuck to Keith, when they were speaking English. Coran still numbered them. But to the Lions, and bizarrely Matt, he was Akira. Lance had somehow managed to know Keith for years before learning his real first name.

Samurai. Jackass. Space ranger partner. 

Lance bit back a sigh, realized that Keith had started to answer him after all, voice low. “I miss the monsoons.”

“At the Garrison?”

The tiniest uptick of a smile. “Texas rain was one thing, but out in the middle of the desert? The sheet lighting, how fast the downpours were.”

Two years on the space whale had given Keith shoulder length hair like silk. Lance was close enough to smell the familiar Altean shampoo all the paladins used, a sharp green scent leagues more pleasant than saccharin air. “Oh man, we used to wait until lights-out and run into the rain.”

Keith turned his head. Had Lance accidentally leaned forward to hair sniff like a creep without realizing, or had they always been that close? The scar that arced over his jaw had healed just a shade too purple for human tissue, an arrow pointing to violet eyes. “I know.”

Lance blinked. 

He remembered it perfectly: the horde of laughing teenagers running into the pounding rain, cold for the first time in half a year. Droplets that felt the size of tangerines, the way Hunk had shushed him the first time he whooped, but laughed the second and been unable to stop until they were drying off inside. Keith hadn’t been there.

“I uh, saw you.” Keith muttered, slowly meeting Lance’s eyes. “You ran out first.”

At the Garrison he’d existed solar systems away from Lance. The best pilot in their year, the best the Garrison had ever recruited, chosen successor of _Takashi Shirogane_\- the man who made Lance believe a kid from Cuba could belong in the stars someday- pretty and cool and just inclined enough toward getting in fistfights at combat sims to be intimidating.

Yeah, Lance would have noticed if he were there. So the thought of him watching, alone from a window or in one of the glass-walled buildings was odd. Lonelier that he’d have thought of golden Cadet Kogane, chosen son of the Garrison.

Of course, now he knew Keith was a god-damned tragedy to go with that heartbreaking face: a hero and an orphan with the blood of those actual stars running through his veins. A fairytale himself.

“Those were the best nights,” Lance shook his head, the drag of Keith’s face right there a destructive, terrifying gravity. He hadn’t been alone on the whale, but Lance couldn’t imagine it wasn’t lonely. Maybe that’s why he was so close- it wasn’t like Keith was the kind of dude to ask for hugs. “I can’t believe we never got caught.” Lance’s skin felt like a fever- maybe he was allergic to the stupid sugar sea after all.

The tiny smile on Keith’s face caught, eyes sparkling. God help him, if Keith needed hugs Lance was going to never, ever let go. “Professor Santos was in charge of your dorm block. Her and Adam just let it happen.”

“Mr. W? I knew he was my favorite teacher for a reason.”

“Yeah,” Keith echoed, finally, terribly, looking down. His hands were flecked with tiny scabs, teardrop burns. A week before the rebel squadron they were fighting alongside had thrown a bomb in over Zarkon’s forces; the move pushed the battle to an end, but whatever accelerant they used was absolutely toxic to Galra.

Keith was burned through his armor, before Kosmo teleported him out. 

Watching Keith poke at his half healed knuckles, words spilled from Lance. “I just miss normal water. Rain, mist- even when it’s terrible out the ocean is so soothing, you know? Like the air is different”-

“I’ve never been.”

His hand was bleeding, stupid beautiful savage. Lance probably should have guessed; Keith who’d gone from desert to desert, who had the softest southern twang when he was punch drunk from battle, wouldn’t have gotten a chance to live in the water like Lance. “Oh man, you have to see it. I’ll take you. My families house is like two minutes from the water, hot as shit in summer but the water is so, so clear. And I can teach you to surf! We’ll”- Lance paused to swallow, very aware Keith was staring at him. “Paladin vacation on the beach! We’ll cover Pidge in sunscreen and Shiro can yell at us when we run into the water, just be people for a while.”

Keith was still staring. “You want me to visit you in Cuba?”

“Yeah,” Lance breathed before he could stop himself, painfully tender. “Come home with me.” And then, because he was an idiot, he clapped Keith on the back. Had Lance been possessed by a frat boy? Madre de dios, Keith’s eyes had even gone wide. “Man, my mama is going to take one look at your pretty boy face and make it her mission in life to feed you. Have to bring Kosmo too! Does he like kids? My baby cousins will think he’s the coolest ever.”

Pretty boy face? _Pretty boy face?_ What the hell was wrong with him?

Keith laughed, furrow between his eyes smoothing out. “Well, if your mom will still think I’m pretty with all this,” He waved a vague hand toward his face, the scar stark in the warm gold light.

Lance made himself unwind to share thelaugh. Like Keith’s face could ever be less handsome- he’d been getting alien marriage proposals since before the abyss. “She’ll love you.”

“I’ll visit,” Keith promised, “When we make it home.”

And he’d come. Showed up shyly in newly purchased Earth clothes that actually fit, Kosmo on his heels. When Lance hugged him so hard they went flying he’d only laughed, and pushed them the rest of the way down right into the surf. It was a perfect visit.

Beautiful summer, the slender nape of Keith’s neck visible as he tied back his hair in the heat. He helped Lance tell his family war stories without scaring them, called his mama Ma’m like a good southern boy no matter how many times she gave him permission to call her Marisol or, memorably,_ mama_.

Lance had been right that his baby cousins would love Kosmo, he’d underestimated how much they’d love Keith. Awkward, shy, and perplexed with children: but that didn’t stop him from letting them climb all over him. 

And Lance was dying, okay? Dying.

All his older sister’s made the easy leap between _Keith Kogane_, the best pilot in the Garrison, who teenage Lance never shut up about and Paladin Keith: sweet and quietly funny, Lance’s best friend, battle-scarred but teaching five year old’s Galra loop braids and letting them practice on his hair. Boyfriend wasn’t a joke: it was an assumption made so often they didn’t even ask.

So what if Lance sometimes looked at Keith and felt like he was going to rattle out of his own skin? So what if they shared Lance’s childhood bedroom all summer, falling into bed together after sneaking out to drink with Veronica and her evil, evil tequila stash. 

So what, if Earth alcohol barely affected Keith, but he gamely half-carried home drunk Lance. So what, if drunk Lance had stripped off his shirt and demanded cuddles, climbed right on top of Keith before passing out?

They were best friends- Keith was the best friend Lance had ever had.

So what, if Keith didn’t move for the whole night and Lance woke up with a burn scarred, calloused hand running gently through his hair?

At the very end of the summer, nights turned cool and lush, the rest of the paladins arrived. And it was just as perfect for a while. Shiro and Adam had just gotten back from their honeymoon; despite both being happier and more well rest than Lance had ever seen them, it took two drinks and all of an hour before they were telling his sisters the worst of the Keith and Lance solo mission shenanigan stories.

Lance had groaned in horror, but Keith just laughed, squeezed his shoulder in sympathy.

Sometimes, half awake now, Lance remembered the grounding weight of Keith’s hands more clearly than the sound of his voice.

But the paladin party was perfect- a golden weekend that spilled over into the next week. Pidge showed up with dog Rover and Matt in tow, Hunk had grown a _beard_, Coran and Romelle sent nunvil in their absence, which it turned out absolutely could get Keith drunk.

There was picture from it on his wall now: the six of them all in the sand, lit in pink sunset light. Pidge had been shrieking while it was taken, Kosmo licking her face from where he sat on Hunk’s lap. Shiro and Adam, on Hunks other side, painfully domestic drinking from the same electric blue cocktail.

Lance had skidded into frame last, landed half on Keith’s lap. The flash had gone off at just the right moment- everyone smiling, everyone laughing, Lance’s face a happy blur. Keith was the only one not looking at the camera.

He’d turned his head when Lance crashed into him, hooked one arm around his bare shoulders. That was the shot: spilling into each other, grinning, Keith holding on.

Three hours later they were screaming at each other. 

It was the last night.

Lance held it in all the way through Keith’s half shy, half terribly proud announcement: he’d been planning with Kolivan a second coming of the blades. Some intelligence work was still needed, but Keith had a plan to pivot their resources and alliances into a relief organization. To help planets the empire had stifled, to help integrate disenfranchised Galra and half-Galra populations. 

It was ambitious. _Brilliant_. Painfully, clearly, well planned- something Keith had probably been thinking about for a long time.

Lance felt like his bones had turned to napalm, lit. He was burning- how could Keith go back? What was the point of this summer, of fighting the whole damned war if Keith was going to go right back out there and risk his life?

_And why hadn’t he told Lance_?

While his cousin’s had been calling him _Tio_\- while Lance, while Lance had- how could Keith be leaving? How could he be going where Lance couldn’t follow, again? He’d pulled him down the beach and asked him, ugly, stupid, fury in every word. 

Keith hadn’t yelled back, not at first, a warning Lance should have taken. He’d sounded crushed- told Lance that they had skills the universe needed, reminded Lance that there were so many planets still out there, stars and beings and fucking space magic left to see. How could they stay on the ground? The whole universe was out there, and they’d helped save it; they_ belonged_ to it.

In a moment Lance would regret his entire life, he’d repeated back, “We?”

Keith reacted like Lance had hit him. A full recoil, those purple eyes wide enough Lance wanted to beg to take it back. But he’d still said it, and Keith still ground out a reply, shocked bitter and furious, gaze bleeding gold. “I want you to come with me.”

It was everything Lance had wanted, but somehow the fight got worse from there. 

Lance yelling that Keith was going to get himself killed. Keith yelling right back that at least it would matter. 

The horrible noise Lance had made in response before completely losing his shit: screaming about how much Keith mattered now, how this _lone wolf shit was always the problem, how he still had nightmares about the Space Whale, how could he even talk about going on Marmora stealth missions, was he trying to die? How could he even think about doing this without Lance there to watch his back- _

Keith, roaring back, that he wanted Lance to come with,_ you stupid asshole. _

And then it all went quiet, because Lance had told the truth.

Looked right at Keith, shaking, beautiful, strong, and ready to return to the universe and said, “I can’t.”

He was gone by morning.

And Lance just kept going.

Took every job Earth could give him, tried to heal from the toll of going to war at seventeen and bonding his soul to an immortal war machine that left him behind. The story was over, wasn’t it?

He spoke at peace summits. Got tattoo after tattoo until his body felt like a body, not a weapon, a scar- tried every invention Pidge came up with and didn’t let himself think about why Matt always vanished when he was around. Eventually, the Garrison convinced him to rejoin the fold. Automatic rank from being a paladin, but they wanted him to teach the next generation about space. Not science; planets, people.

He was an ambassador that never left Earth, a hero who’d hung up his gun.

Wasn’t that how stories were supposed to end?

Peace, it turned out, was sad. Black and white to the war’s rainbow of color, and Lance hated himself for it. 

So he was convinced he was hallucinating, dreaming, finally lost his damned mind when what was unmistakably a lion crashed down from the night sky in front of him and purred, right deep down in his soul like liquid fire, like love:_ Leandro_. 

_ Paladin. Our paladin needs u_s.

***

The first memory wasn’t one he’d actually lived.

Full color, sensory and sound, drowning in the Quantum Abyss. Keith had only seen this one once, a shot of future so clearly both distant and near. A memory of youth, seized.

Keith was young_ now_. Would stay young for an indefinitely long time if his Galra genes were of any indication. Lamplight yellow sclera when he was angry hadn’t been a positive change- but they’d come along with a huge increase in night vision, stamina, and teeth just quite inhumanly sharp enough to make his lips bleed at absent worry biting. 

Krolia had remembered the same acceleration of strength in her youth at around 22 imperial years. Keith was older than that- time dilation and flawed wormholes and a fucking space war- made the number uncertain.

But Lance was twenty four now- and Lance was twenty four in the memory. 

He’d tried to explain it to a very patient Shiro and a much less patient but equally helpful Adam; to be in the Abyss was to relive his past moments. But he’d lived the future ones in just as real a way. Present Keith could remember things he hadn’t learned or experienced yet because his future self had, and Keith had been in his own future mind. 

So. He knew in the memory the Lance with him was twenty-four.

Keith recognized the salt and green life in the syrupy night air not as ocean, but as _Havana_. Loved the familiar city that current Keith had never been to- knew- at this point Keith forced himself to recategorize the dissonance as Real Keith and _that Keith_.

_That Keith_, memory, future, impossible time fuckery lucky bastard Keith who knew the way down the cobblestones to pull grinning Lance into a club. His hands- the same bayard callouses, same steadiness- knew the smooth shape of Lance’s hipbone better than they ever had a sword. 

In this moment and that body with it’s sunburnt shoulders and curious aches as much as he was in the present, ship trapped in a descent toward a planet he was now sure was considered just a story _for a reason,_ Keith heard and felt and lived it play out, just like he dreamt about it after escaping the space whale.

The whole world was pink. Sticky with heat and sweet like melted sherbet in the neon light as Lance teased him, face wholly human and tanner than Keith had ever seen it. Arms thrown up at the beat around them, but Keith was pulled closer instead: Lance’s laugh over his lips, Keiths hand marveling at the softness left behind by a freshly trimmed undercut. Happiness on the back of his tongue, coiled with heat in his gut.

It was a candy colored dream where they danced just as well as they’d always fought together, Lance’s hand sliding down his spine, creeping up the back of a tank top Keith absolutely did not own. That Keith, who had the same dangerous mouth as he did now, tasting the salt of Lance’s neck and knowing- _knowing_\- remembering exactly what it felt like to bite that soft skin. 

Lance’s groan reverberating from his chest to Keith, noise buried in bass. “_Querido_.”

Like shaking awake, Keith fell out of the memory and abruptly back to his real life. Interior lights of his ship flickering worryingly, not that he needed the brightness- the atmosphere that had pulled him like some kind of black hole was lavender and bright around him- floating through a freefall that should have never happened. 

He had just enough time to catalog the clearer details his dreaming mind had forgotten: curls shaped by saltwater, the scar sliced through his eyebrow present Lance didn’t have.

Or at least, hadn’t the last time he and Keith had actually been in a room together.

The Quantum Abyss had given him much in exchange for two burned up years. A mother, Kosmo, the knowledge of where Shiro really was, the story of his parents, but just as many things he didn’t understand: a stark image of his own back, symbols for paladins of water and fire tattooed between his shoulder blades like wings. The soul sink feel of a bayard he no longer possessed twisting to new form. White Paladin armor. Laser burn on his face, his jaw, like being struck by lightening. Luxite caves and lavender skin. 

Some things had already happened. Some, Keith was sure _wouldn’t_. 

Teeth gritted and hands trying to again coax life from an improbably, impossibly dead engine, the next memory slammed into him. Sleepy gold late afternoon light in the desert, slating through window banks of a chemistry class. The Garrison- nine, ten, a lifetimes years ago. Before Shiro went to space and Keith’s world went to shit. Before the anger in his veins had a purpose, two years before that heat made him the guardian spirit of fire, Lance was about to laugh. 

Keith let the memory drag him in.


	2. Once and always

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we meet Red's new look, Lance flails on the inside, and we remember that besides Shiro, Keith has people in his corner.
> 
> More on how Keith became trapped in the dreaming light, and what exactly he's doing there. (He blames Allura)

It was Red.

It couldn’t possibly have been Red- she didn’t even look like Red anymore- but there was nothing in the universe like her bone rattling purr, the way connection tore Lance wide open with overwhelming love and adrenaline’s fire.

He didn’t understand._ Leandro_\- it was turning into a growl. On shaking, unsteady legs, Lance stumbled forward to touch one monolithic paw. The alloy was cold beneath his hand, smooth and perfect as dreamstuff. She was bigger, nearly the size of Black now. Darker too- the type of red you got from mixing a drop of blue, Altean teal insets replaced with pale gold. Herself. Completely new: a paladin bond couldn’t be faked, but _how_? 

“I don’t understand,” Lance said aloud.

_Always a paladin,_ Red growled, before lowering her mighty head._ Always mine_.

Lance was going to _cry_. Pidge, Shiro, even Hunk: they’d always assumed he missed Blue. And he did- Blue was flowing water, flexible and soothing, utterly open to the world. She was all heart, adored each of her pilots; Lance, Allura, but Hunk and Matt too, who’d only flown her once. 

Red’s love was absolute, he’d never been able to describe it. 

Black cared for all the paladins like a mother, the other lions too: Lance had only flown her a few times, but it had been like watching over a pride. Protective, immeasurably fond, but distant by necessity: she couldn’t fight all their battles for them.

For Red, there was only ever Keith and Lance. 

_That’s right_, she purred now, _Always_. Before pressing into his mind a dizzying array of images of her changes- her new body? _Had to become._ She was bigger- different firepower- was that a bedroom?

“Who built you?”

Red’s tail lashed against the desert floor with impatience, he could feel it. She wanted to show him; wanted to fly with a full cockpit, wanted the stars, wanted- Keith?

_Becoming. Time for Alte_a _over, not needed. Had to leave to become, Paladins needed me. Ready now, our paladin needs us_. Lance had forgotten how overwhelming the Lions could be. Her voice was booming in his head, so welcome but so, so much.

He should probably be questioning what becoming meant to an immortal living machine. Had she always been able to change shape? Where were the other Lions?

But instead, all he managed was, “Keith?”

A blast of love from Red._ Akira. Paladin. Mine. Our paladin needs us, Paladin_. And then, snide because she was a brat Lance had missed like breathing: _Yours._

Lance was fairly sure his heart was trying to stop. Was Keith in trouble? Red had rescued him before, from the brink of death. Surely if he was in danger she wouldn’t have come here first? She parsed enough of his emotions to make another grumbling, growly noise that seemed to bound off the inside of his skull. _Yours. Our paladin. Lost where only we can find. Needs us._

He was fairly sure that a single possessive pronoun from his own mouth would have gotten him punched in the face by Keith, but Red didn’t like that thought either. She stomped over the next thing he imagined as well, the terrified follow up that lost meant adrift, somewhere in space, ship dead. _Not danger,_ she insisted, purposefully vague,_ need_.

“Red,” Lance grumbled, rubbing a tired hand over his face. There still seemed like a high chance this was some insane dream. He was in the middle of nowhere, watching for meteor shower. Instead, a Lion had just fallen out of the sky for him. “Keith does not want to see me.”

_Stupid kitten_, was her reply before Lance was flung into memories. The first time they’d gotten a training sim correct together. Lance saying _samurai_ and Keith replying _sharpshooter_ with bright eyes and a sarcastic salute. The battle with chemical bombs; terror, so much terror,_ what if he never knows_. Starlight in Lance’s hair. Matt and Keith on the floor of Red’s hanger, Matt saying, _you guys were unstoppable in the field_\- Lance realized they weren’t all his memories.

“You said you didn’t tell secrets,” he hissed. 

_Emergency_, Red insisted, and hammered his brain with pink light.

_I don’t know how to say anything right. Good team. Hey man. Come home with me._ Keith’s laugh, Keith’s smile, Keith painstakingly teaching him how to use a sword, grinning mid-battle and yelling _good shot_. Racing down alien alleys, laughing while they were fired at- they were unstoppable, twenty, unbeatable together. Solo missions that always became pair-ups while Shiro shook his head.

Lance’s sleeping weight pinning Keith to a too-small bed in Cuba. Keith barely breathing: so happy, so scared, brushing hair from Lance’s face slow, soft, like he was afraid he’d break at Keith’s touch. 

Lance flung himself from the lion bond so hard he physically stumbled, gasping. Red, locked onto both their quintessence, who saw everything: how had Lance never questioned what it meant, that his and Keith’s souls could pilot together? 

He was calling Hunk before his breathing slowed, fingers numb. The mini com was Pidge-made, not Garrison issue, so the connection was perfect and instant, Lance immediately staring at Hunk in his home office across the world, cheerful yellow walls blinding in midday sun. “Lance, hey buddy, what’s”-

“I’m in love with Keith.” 

To his credit, Hunk didn’t laugh, or comment on the fact Lance looked like a crazy person right now. He did however, frown. “I know?”

Lance thanked Pidge’s eternal genius for the call’s free standing integrity once connected. It didn’t get in the way at all when he buried his face in both his hands and groaned.

“Did something happen? Did Keith finally call you? I haven’t heard from him in weeks, but Krolia was sending him on some exploration mission according to Matt, so”- The frantic shaking of his head made Hunk stop talking.

“No, no, I just”- Lance couldn’t breathe. Hunk was reaching toward the screen like he wanted to hug Lance.

“Lance,” He sighed, carefully pausing to put away what Lance knew were edits of his latest cookbook. 

“I know it’s insane,” Lance replied, feeling somehow both elated and infinitely small and stupid, “But I just”-

“Did you not think you loved him when you were dating?”

And that was almost as big of a surprise as Red falling out of the sky. “We never dated!” He spluttered.

Hunk stared a him for a solid second before he started rubbing at his beard. “You two are going to give me an ulcer.” He muttered, hair rasping at the anxious motion. “I told Pidge something like this would happen, but_ no_ she was sure Keith had said so”-

“Keith said we were dating?” 

Lance was going to go back in time and eviscerate his younger self. Hunk had put on his very patient best friend, it’s okay Lance face, which Lance hadn’t actually seen since his botched coming out.

“No. Lance. Do you remember junior year? When you almost failed English because the fighter pilot class had gym outside that semester, right out the window?”

Red was laughing at him. Lance made a choked sound.

“You spent all your time together, man. I mean, you were close before, but that last year in space you were always together, even in the Castle. You invited him home to meet your mom and he spent the whole summer? I mean, you were sharing a bedroom, everyone kind of assumed? And then you _broke up in front of us_. I’m really glad you’re figuring this out eventually, but I personally never, ever want to see Keith cry again.”

Jesus fucking quiznak.

Halfway through a sentence about the horror that was Keith’s sad kitten face, Hunk realized he probably wasn’t helping. “You’re both my friends.” He said, gentle, firm. “You and Keith have always made each other crazy, that doesn’t just go away, but it’s never going to be easy either.”

Lance shook his head.

He didn’t want _easy_. Had he ever? Lance moved to a new country by himself in eighth grade. Learned a second language to get into a space program, reached for interstellar travel on a scholarship. 

Easy was staying on earth, teaching, growing a little less content and a little more exhausted every year. Stars on his skin but not in his eyes. Keith wasn’t easy- he was wildfire. The ocean tide, star shine and laser blasts, everything that had ever made Lance his worst and best self. “He never said anything.”

“He didn’t?”

“No- I would have”- Lance didn’t actually know what he would have done. Proposed in the middle of a deadly battle, probably. Stolen Red and tried to go after Keith in the Abyss, even if it damned them both. Done anything if it made Keith feel half as good as Lance did when he smiled at him.

Some of that must have telegraphed, because Hunk cooed. “Awww. Is this happening for real? Like right now? Because that’s a Loverboy Lance face.”

Red was crooning in his head. All Lance recognized was _Akira_, which was more than enough. “Yes.” He felt the warmth of Hunk’s shout from across the world. 

Hunk was still yelling encouragements when Lance hung up.

He felt crazy, newly wide awake. Like the first time he’d held a bayard and felt it twist in need. Piloting Blue through asteroids, yelling and afraid, but knowing what to do. Was this what raw quintessence tasted like? Alive.

It felt like anything was possible.

He should have gone back to the Garrison to at least report his absence. Register that a craft was leaving Earth’s heavily protected orbit. Called one of his sisters, packed anything.

Instead, Lance looked at the stars overhead, familiar earth patterns for perseid season. The southern hemisphere decorated his back, the constellations of high summer spilling onto his shoulders like a map home. He wouldn’t loose this sky. The desert wind even tasted the same as it had that night, all those years ago, petichor in the air.

Red opened her mouth, and Lance walked right in.

***

The sixth memory came without pause.

Keith had barely blinked away his fathers face before a rangy body slammed into him. “Kogane!”

Just like it had happened, Keith lived again stabilizing the weight of taller, reckless limbs. He might not have recognized the form, but he knew that voice. Keith spit blond hair from his mouth and grinned. “You have not been out here long enough to have grown a mane.”

Bright brown eyes without their familiar frames found his as Matt bounced back out of his hold. “One of us is dressed like a space ninja right now, and it is not me.”

Keith couldn’t even scowl, just shook his head. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to how happy he’d been when Pidge found out Matt was alive- he was her brother, and it wasn’t like she seemed to know they’d been friends. 

Keith hadn’t even known Matt had made it to the castleship- he’d been in deep space, sectors over on a Marmora raid that had gone nowhere. Cold, bone deep tired, keyed up from a fight that never happened: and now the friend he’d thought died along with his brother on a desolate asteroid was alive in front of him. All he managed to splutter was, “_Matt._”

And just like that they were hugging for real, Matt making disgusting wet laughing noises as he tried not to cry. “You little shit, I missed you so much. Had to learn from Shiro that you were a Paladin and a Blade, while Katie looked at me while I was insane. Quiznaker.”

Because Keith was Keith, he jabbed him in the ribs in response. “You aren’t using that correctly.”

Matt groaned. “She was confused, because you used to actually let people call you Akira, _Akira_.” The second recitation of his name was announced with a hair ruffle that left Keith with only one choice. He had a hundred questions for Matt: had he been okay with the rebels, was he _staying_, had Shiro given him the horrifying personal health and safety in space lecture yet? So naturally what he did instead was carefully flip him to the hanger floor to avoid further hair incursions.

The rebels had taught him at least one thing, because Matt swept Keith’s leg before he hit the ground.

He landed laughing, the buckles of his stealth suit digging into ribs as Keith curled sideways. The just slightly warm Altean floors felt like heaven after space, even better as Red’s purr pressed the back of his mind.

Like summoned by the half thought of Red’s other, current yet former paladin, Matt rolled over with raised eyebrows. When Pidge made that face, she was about to cause a cataclysmic system failures.

“I also met Lance.”

Keith, who knew exactly where this was going, sat up with a groan. “It’s not”-

He didn’t even finish the sentence before Red was reminding him of pink light and the aftermath of an explosion. The red and black bayards, as swords crossed in a fight. Warm, bare shoulder blades pressed against his in an elevator shaft.

Matt was equally skeptic, but much louder. “You went to space with the guy you’d had the hots for since fourteen! It’s like a fairytale! A gay, gay fairytale with a long pause in the middle where we used to lay on the couch of angst and shame!”

The couch of angst and shame was more of a loveseat. One of the three pieces of furniture in Matt’s Garrison single: bed, desk, squashy hideous yard sale chair Keith threw himself into when Shiro and Adam got tired of his moping. Cushions deep enough to swallow a person and the slight, ever present smell of mountain dew, one long burn from the dangerous month Matt possessed a contraband hotplate. 

Did Alteans have armchairs? Keith was going to ask Coran.

“I should have stuck around for Adam’s advice,” He muttered, with absolute sincerity.

Matt looked older. Awkward lankiness given way to height, just centered in his body enough Keith had to think he’d seen real fighting. Matt- geeky, cosplaying, _genius_ Matt- who’s sheer cheerful insistent will had made them friends when Keith wanted to talk to no one but the flight simulator, fighting Galra. Quiznaking, hell.

He still made the same faces. “Adam, he says! Adam, after I listened to the entire _he saw me punch Griffin, what if he thinks I’m crazy? What if he thought it was hot? I could punch Griffin again saga.” _

Keith ignored the heat burning his cheeks. “James Griffin was a dick.”

It was so nice to speak to someone who spoke the same language.

He had Shiro- Keith sometimes thanked every power in the universe for Takashi Shirogane, except for when he was using his Galra arm to cheat at sparring- but the other’s were difficult. 

His team, that he’d fight and die for but- Pidge was wonderful, a fellow antisocial hermit whose lab he could hide in. He could only say something right to Lance what felt like every tenth attempt. He’d always been awkward, with Allura. Hunk was an actual angel without whom they’d all die.

It wasn’t the same.

Matt pulled himself upright, long hair tangled half in and half out of the hood of his jacket. Keith had been right to say mane; what had been a spiky halo he remembered Matt pulling on while coding had grown at least a foot. “Okay, but seriously. Accidentally in space together, only humans for lightyears. And now you fly the same lion? Give me wartime hope, are the red paladins finally banging? I tried to ask Shiro but he turned the same shade of grey as that time he forgot his Grandmother’s birthday.”

“_You asked Shiro?_”

Matt nodded. “Well, actually I asked if there’d been any drift compatible sex scandals yet, but then I realized you two had also briefly shared a lion, so”-

“Jesus christ.” Keith heard the south creep into his voice, Texas vowels ghosting horror. “It’s not like that.”

Matt bumped his shoulder. “Obviously not. But after I’d hugged Katie for about twenty hours, you were the first person I asked Shiro about. They put your face on coalition posters, you know? Lance was offended.”

It took a minute for Keith to see what Matt was getting at.

“Lance is not jealous.” He hissed, aware the tone of his voice was only making this worse. “It’s been three years and he spent half of them hating me! He thinks we were rivals at the Garrison.”

Current, real Keith distantly clenched his jaw. Rivals.

They’d been best friends, until the Quantum Abyss fed him hope and he’d come off the Space Whale thinking impossible things. 

They’d been exposed to whole scope of the cosmos at the end of the war- a hundred, thousand infinite possibilities. In one of a million realities, Keith had figured out a way to make Lance stop hating him soon enough.

The void spirit possessing Honevra had probably eaten it.

Rivals.

Keith had painstakingly snuck a valentine into Lance’s locker when he was fifteen. Carefully loitered far enough away to see him find it the next morning, but not close enough to be creepy- Shiro had pointed out that he maybe should have just given it to him in person, but Adam sagely agreed with what Keith was calling dignity- only for Lance to read it, shriek, and immediately throw it away.

What the hell kind of rivalry was that?

In the memory, Keith was shoving hair from his face, Marmora hood disengaged. “We’re friends now, but that’s it.”

“That’s the start!” Matt actually rubbed his hands together, the best, worst part that Keith knew he was absolutely serious. “Your wingman has returned! I’m not letting you die in the service of a billion year old war without making sweet, sweet love to”-

“Matt.”

“Okay, fine.” Matt him his palms, smile real and genuine. “But I’m moving to the castleship. The rebels will be fine without me, and if I just so happen to watch the great Kogane McClain true love tango start, it’ll be a bonus.”

Keith coughed on air. “No, that’s not,” He loved and might soon feel the urge to throttle Matt for wanting to help, but eventually, like Shiro, he’d be lapsing to silent sympathy. “What did you do when you met Allura?”

The pink cheeks were instant. “The beautiful magic space princess?”

Keith didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a close thing. Allura was amazing, just not in a way that touched him beyond friendship. “Right. Take whatever you said and dial it up to twenty. That’s how Lance looks at Allura. How he’s always looked at Allura.”

“Aww, buddy.”

“No, it’s fine.” Keith said, all at once exhausted again. From the mission, he told himself, from the cold. “It’s just not ever happening. It’s been that way since day one.” Matt was giving him the same look he’d gotten when Sam Holt brought Matt’s dog to the dorm for a visit and he learned Keith had never had a pet.

“The age difference is pretty insurmountable, though.” Red had gone quiet, but in place of words sent heat. Keith had never gotten a clear answer on how the elemental control the lions possessed worked- was she communing with his brain, like how she spoke directly in his head? The warmth felt real, and welcome.

“He’ll find someone else.” How could he not? When he wasn’t pushing every button Keith possessed, Lance was nice. Funny and charming, good with people. “An alien girl, someone back on earth. He’s on a quest to find Mrs. Blue Lion.”

Shrug abated by Matt leaning his shoulder against Keith’s again and staying put, he sighed instead. It lasted all of second before Matt wrapped both his long arms around him and squeezed, armored bodysuit be-damned. Three knives and a set of bioactivated grenades were giving his bruises bruises, but Keith didn’t care.

He didn’t let himself feel pathetic for leaning into the contact.

“Keith?” Keith twisted his head to look, sword arm crushed between them.

“My hair only grew because of Calpaxian vitamins. You can have some.”

Laughter carried Keith back to reality.

_Matt._ Matt knew where he was. He’d been the first stop on Keith’s twice yearly, possibly enforced by Daibazaal military if he didn’t listen to Kolivan, vacation from work. He was also, besides Shiro and Adam, the only person who knew what Keith was really doing out here. 

When the Galra and Altean homeworlds reappeared, so did other many planets. Systems Zarkon had destroyed, worlds Haggar had mined to death: Allura and Lotor brought them back. The Coalition was still monitoring and counting, but the Blades, the last bastion of Galra culture from a world before Zarkon, had already found discrepancies.

Matt insisted, for the sake of the secret, on calling them creative differences.

_Creative differences_\- in reality. Not doubling like the Paladins had encountered, but wholly new things that were just familiar enough to be recognized. 

Keith thought it made perfect sense. Lotor had spent his whole life being too Altean, too Galran at once. From the second she drew breath in the future, Allura had been in mourning. They’d saved the whole universe and become something impossible to do it- why wouldn’t they add equally impossible, beautiful things to the world that they’d cherished?

The planets and stars the Blades were tracking had only existed in Galran legends. Children’s stories, ten thousand year old Altean dreams. 

Before Keith had come here- Kral’ax’zyan, the Nexus Home- and had the beautiful, uninhabited planet’s gravity drag him in faster than a blackhole, he’d been in rooftop bar on Velsar V with Matt.

Over a cocktail glass stuffed with glowing ice and flowers, several rounds in Matt had mournfully tugged on Keith’s braid, “You’re not even taking the vitamins, how are you pulling ahead?” “

Galra genes?” Keith offered. Those same singularly blended human and Galra genes made drinking fruitless normally, but Velsar V was one of the best stocked spaceports for lightyears. “I think it’s starting to go purple at the ends.”

Matt held up the braid to the light, watched Keith’s black hair flip back what was undeniably a magenta sheen. “What the fuck? Does it do that in the sun?”

Keith bit the straw in his own drink. Same glowing flowers- which Matt was right, tasted _exactly_ like mango, Keith was never ever going to stop loving all the weird shit in space- but the fishbowl version complete with what Keith could not pronounce, but Shiro had declared Altean tequila on his last visit. “Earth sun? Not at all.”

Matt pulled out what looked like a jewelers loop, but gleamed electric silver, and tugged Keith closer. 

He didn’t mind. After the mortifying, horrific end to his summer in Cuba had left him not just depressed but with a mostly human body that was trying to go into full Galra battle rage_ all the goddamn time,_ Keith had asked for help.

Matt wasn’t just the smartest person Keith knew, he’d also been keeping Keith’s secrets since they were kids. Plenty of people watched him trip over his feet or flirt and forgot he’d been a rebel battalion leader, let themselves be surprised Matt was one of the most sought after private contractors in the galaxy. 

Keith had never been surprised- not even when Matt figured out that the Paladins, anyone who’d ever piloted a Lion in battle, no longer interacted with time correctly. Just like the planets, it made some sense: their friend had become a primordial deity of infinite power. 

It was still a secret, but Keith was good at keeping those too. 

With a snap Matt pulled away the loop, downed a sparkling shot in one motion. “Obviously balancing your own quintessence is having an affect. But Jesus, Kogane, do you have to keep getting hotter?”

Keith snorted not-tequila.

“No, no, can you not leave some for your human comrades? Bad enough you’re a sexy space prince now”-

“Mostly human,” Keith had grumbled, but he had been laughing and Matt was too.

He wasn’t alone._ It wasn’t the Abyss._

If Keith lost too much time drifting- falling, he knew it was really falling, but nothing about that motion registered to his own senses or his half dead ship- someone would come pull him out. It wouldn’t take years, it wouldn’t even be months. 

It wasn’t the abyss the all over again. T

hat was the last clear thought for a long, long time as the memories returned.

***

Lance was vibrating. 

Not only because it turned out one Red’s favorite modifications was that she didn’t always need a pilot now- she’d shot into the stratosphere the second her mouth was shut, knocking Lance down with a catlike laugh.

He’d laughed, yelled, before realizing that even the floor he was holding onto was different. 

The ramp he’d once dragged a cow up gone, replaced by a smoother incline and textured floors in the pattern of overlapping scales. Red, at his curious thought replied smugly, _mermaid_, before going quiet.

Lance was having a hard time standing again. The entrance corridor was matte black now, the scaled floor silver grey, lit by warm stripes of white light set in the walls he knew would lead him to the cockpit. Red had said _becoming_ and _our paladin_ and there were handles, two of them at just slightly different heights, where her mouth opened straight to space. 

Two.

Overjoyed, terrified, Lance scrubbed a hand over his face. “Red? How far have we gone?”

She sent him back a clear image of Neptune, massive in her eyes. 

For a second Lance had to just breathe. He hadn’t forgotten how beautiful space was, how lucky he’d been to see it the first time at all. But he hadn’t thought about it beyond teaching; buried the way color seemed like an incredible dream against the dark, how the hum of Red felt like the warmest hug in the universe, how much he loved not knowing where he was going.

Everything was out there- Keith was out there.

Eventually he’d get off the floor, find out what else Red had changed. But first, Neptune meant they’d already blown past Earth’s defenses and the martian space port. It was possible Lions didn’t register on scans, but- “Did you all need to ah, become?”

Red answered with a wordless affirmative. Then, _Blue and Black are beyond_. She showed him a flash of who remained: still massive, gentle Yellow. Green, sleeker than ever. Two lions he recognized in form but not shape, white and silver, wrestling in a starscape he couldn’t place. Then, bizarrely, a perfectly clear image of Shiro’s engraved wedding ring.

_Ho boy_.

Lance dialed and set his com on the floor. It stayed perfectly in place, Red’s delight brushing up against the churn of emotions inside him. He tried to arrange his face into something normal.

Of course he’d just begun to twitch, the call slow to connect, when Adam answered, blinking without his glasses in a dark room. “The world better be ending. Call back in six hours- no ten.”

“Hi, Adam.” Lance swallowed. “It is actually kind of an emergency, can I talk to Shiro?”

Adam glared at him for a long beat before sleepily grumbling, and the projection went dark again. After a few seconds a light came on, Shiro’s bare shoulders and distinctly rumpled bedhead appearing. He yawned into his forearm, flesh and blood arm sculpted as ever- somewhere, sixteen year old Lance was screaming. “Lance? Is everything okay?”

Lance gulped. Red, unhelpfully, playfully pushed the same vision on him again, twin Lions wrestling. The stars looked like Andromeda now. “Yes! Well, no. I have to tell you something.” Despite the fact it was two in the morning there, Shiro was instantly alert, that careful supportive look on his face that made Lance both want curl up in shame and spill his guts. The Captain Shirogane, brightest of the Garrison brass, Black Paladin of Voltron face. “I have reason to believe the Lion’s are coming back to earth.”

Shiro blinked. “The Lions?”

On still not fully cooperating legs Lance stood, let Red helpfully prod him along until he’d gotten through cockpit doors and turned, giving the com a view of one of Neptunes moons. Shiro blinked again, looking much more like _Shiro,_ grey eyes wide. “Lance. Are you in space _right now_?”

Whatever Shiro’s face was doing was interrupted by Adam’s reappearance, Lance caught the automatic softening of his expression just before a brown hand crossed into view, handing him a steaming mug. Shiro’s lips formed a phrase that definitely wasn’t a simple_ thank you_, and chugged.

“Ahhh,” Lance said, as the silence spooled out a for a minute. Red had jumped from Spanish to English to Japanese again, blissfully happy and completely insistent. He tried to communicate silently with her that he didn’t know what she was saying, but she only got louder.

_Need to learn, Leandro kitten._ He’d actually been thinking the same thing- had thought it before he blew up everything in his face- but the slightest agreement made her even louder. _Akira_, _Akira, AKIRA._ Lance groaned. Right in time for Shiro to have woken up for real this time, watch Lance rub at his forehead with narrow eyes. 

He swore. “You’re in a Lion right now, aren’t you?”

“Red,” He admitted, the sheer overwhelming volume of things he was feeling leaking into his voice. And then, because Shiro knew enough about being in sentient warships with attitude problems he could speak aloud without seeming insane, again in a whole different tone, “_Red_, I can’t understand you. Stop shouting, Jesus Christ.”

Shiro laughed. Clapped a hand to his mouth like he didn’t mean to, because even at two in the morning, he was polite, but gasped out the words. “You’re in Red and she’s yelling at you?”

He sounded as happy as Lance had felt, seeing stars again. Magic, impossible happiness, light in his eyes like how he looked when Adam laughed. Shiro, who’d gone to space before any of them but stopped being a paladin first. It made Lance brave. “I’m going after Keith.”

Shiro’s smile was enormous, for the second before it became a laugh again as Adam shouldered him out of view. “‘Kashi, let me handle this.”

“You,” Adam growled, now clad in glasses and a huge sweater that spilled over his hands as he pointed at Lance. “Don’t look at me like that. Honestly, just because Takashi adopted a pack of teenagers in space, all of you act like I didn’t also raise our demonchild.”

“_Adam_,” Shiro cut in.

“Look at me, hellspawn,” Adam said, “I don’t care if you’re a paladin or a general or family, if you break Keith’s heart again, I will throw you into a blackhole myself. I don’t care if being assholes is how you two express affection, _figure your shit out this time_.”

Honestly? It sounded fair. If Lanced fucked this up- like he had when he was sixteen, twenty, twenty-two, every time he’d ever let Keith walk away from him without saying anything- swift death would probably be kind.

Alarmingly, Red rumbled something that wasn’t disagreement. Shiro had taken back over, crowded into Adam’s space to nod. “And we’ll cover for you with the Garrison as long as you need. Are the other Lions?..”

“Okay,” Lance made himself look at Adam in the agreement, before Red shouted loud enough to clang through his skull again. “Fuck,” He spit, blinking watering eyes. “I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you about the others. Getting like a quarter of this- fucking hell, does Keith speak any alien languages? Red is mixing them all together.”

“Altean?” Adam offered, at the same time as Shiro saying, “High Galran.”

“That explains the growling,” Lance pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, reverberating Galra consonants echoing, and breathed. “Okay. The Lions are returning to their Paladins, I think Green is the closest but Red says it’s a surprise.”

Red liked that. _Once a paladin, always a paladin. White-one-brother-silver-friend will be happy_. And then, _Almost happy as Akira_. 

She was terrible.

He’d missed her so, so much.


	3. Echoes remain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Keith relives several different flavors of love, Black tries, and Lance is confused.

If there was one thing to anchor him to fact that he was not trapped in the Abyss, it was this: on the back of the Space Whale, Keith still experienced time.

The flashes came continually- past, future, horrifically personal- but in between there was still time to live; talking to Krolia, sparring, teaching Kosmo to fetch- the years passed in very real ways. At the Nexus, the Place of Harmony, Keith tumbled from memory to the next.

He was watching a blue eyed cadet laugh in a summer storm- and then, then staring at his own scabbed knees, more than a year younger than the last moment, a decade removed from his current self.

Keith’s first year at the Garrison. Making himself as small as possible, refusing the warmth he felt with Adam and Shiro on either side of him; they were like giants, it seemed incredible that they’d been even younger than he was now.

That was it- a snippet, a brush of angry adolescent fear: he wanted to like them, he never wanted anyone to look at him like that. He had the stars, had his record breaking scores that had saved him from drowning in sugared sweet voices of Texan hate,_ he didn’t need a family_. _He wanted to be loved, he was a burden, he was never, ever going to matter with his feet on the ground. _

A different moment, that same year, Shiro again, his voice that big brother warm after Keith had broken a handful of his records. 

“Kogane and Shirogane,” Shiro said, reaching out to slowly ruffle Keith’s hair. He’d always telegraphed his movements those early years, been so, so careful not to startle him. It burned adult Keith’s chest distantly, to see it again with grown eyes. “Going to be gold to my silver, kiddo, I knew you could do it.” 

Like Keith wasn’t a fourteen year old who’d just beat flight records Shiro trained his whole life for- like the other instructors weren’t sure he cheated, making him execute the same sims again _and again- like-_

In the memory, Keith ducked out of Shiro’s loose hold with a groan. “_Shiroooo_.”

He’s left with confused, slow-blooming warmth of that moment for half a second before sliding into a teal tinged memory of the Castleship, years later. 

Warmth was the opposite of this feeling.

A slam that reverberated up through his hands, settled in his bones. 

Flight helmet slammed down. Chest plate of his paladin armor ripped open, psychic Altean clasps protesting at the force of his shaking hands. Red- it was still Red- Red who crooned low in his head now- _Akira, no. Paladin. My paladin, kitten_.

But Black joined her, a rumble fathoms deep, regretful and distantly fond. _Akira. Akira, be well, paladin_. 

Her Japanese echoing in Keith’s head had Shiro’s accent. 

He was going to _scream_.

Ripping off his armor was completely futile but it helped- Red was trying to spool away the heat of his panic. Black tried too, deep and calm but- but she sounded like _Shiro_\- she sounded like the love in his voice, talking to Adam late at night- she sounded like _Keith’s father_\- 

He couldn’t breathe.

“Keith!” Lance had finally caught up with him, breathing hard.

One run in Black, and Keith was already ruining everything. It should have been safe- it was such a simple mission- there shouldn’t have been Galra- Keith shouldn’t had dove into a fleet of battlecruisers like he wasn’t the head and lead of weapon, like he hadn’t lost the speed and rage of Red that might make that insane, but safe.

He hadn’t even pulled back, Black had taken back control.

“Keith, you can’t just”- one of Lance’s feet connected with Keith’s discarded greaves. The clang made him pause.

Keith didn’t bother to look up, shame prickling hot in his skin. He knew damned well what Lance was seeing: exactly what he’d predicted, that Keith should never be Black Paladin. One stupid diplomatic mission where he’d nearly gotten them killed and here Keith was: a ruin surrounded by smoke singed armor, Altean undersuit choking him, black Bayard rolled away after he’d _thrown it_-

A rustle, and then a bare, warm hand was gently trying to pull on Keith’s wrist. “Keith, man, c’mon.”

The tone made it worse; heat that felt good. Keith gritted his teeth. “Go away, Lance.”

It wasn’t a snap, it came out exhausted and so, so much softer that Keith ever let himself be. But what was the point? What was the point?

In his head, Black murmured, in carefully crisp English without a hint of honey vowels or home he’d found when he was nearly grown,_ breathe, Akira_.

Of course, because Lance had been a god damned menace since the second he crashed Keith’s rescue with windswept hair, who just kept making him insane-flying Blue like a maniac, nothing like he’d been taught, everything like the joy Keith felt in the sky, winking those big, beyond blue eyes at Allura, yelling at Keith in training sims but hefting a rifle like it was nothing, long-fingered hands that never, ever missed- he carefully lowed himself down next to where Keith was sitting, leaning against the empty spare hangers wall.

Red whispered, barely a breath,_ Leandro wants to help_.

Keith didn’t answer. Just kept staring through his battle-sweaty hair up at the distant ceiling’s inset teal lights, configured like stars around a planet that hadn’t existed in thousands of years. A map without a compass.

Still breathing too hard, he tried not to draw attention to the way his whole body wanted to shake.

It was a long enough time that Keith could almost take full breaths by the time Lance spoke, shoulders brushing. “I get it. I mean- I don’t, I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to fly Black. You were trying to move like you were in Red, I could tell. We thought- we thought you were dead, Keith.” Keith turned his head, but Lance wasn’t looking at him. The crystal clear gaze was set down, staring at his own bare hands. He’d pulled off his gloves before grabbing Keith- he could see them discarded between red platings- but was otherwise sitting on a floor in full armor.

With Keith.

He felt_ sick_.

Lance looked up. Caught Keith staring- and it made his voice stronger. 

“I get it, man. Red’s an adrenaline bomb,” It was spoken with such enormous fondness Keith couldn’t grope for offense. “And you were a fighter pilot. They marked you for space at what, fourteen?” 

Numbly, Keith shook his head. Fifteen- he was just a little older, despite their being in the same Garrison year. Lance always forgot, and Keith always liked it. 

“Right. You were this lone wolf superstar pilot,_ cool_ and _popular_ and _talented_ and then you became the paladin of the fastest, scariest Lion, and I get it man, you’re used to working alone, but you can’t”-

Keith’s brain abruptly caught up with what he was hearing. “_What are you talking about_?”

Lance was immediately defensive. “I’m trying to say, it’s okay you _stubborn, suicidal_”- 

“You were the top of your class too,” Keith blurted, before he could stop himself.

The anger visibly drained away, leaving Lance staring, mouth just slight open.

Maybe Keith had died out there- because despite the fact that he felt like utter, unmitigated shit, a part of his brain kept pinging_ lips lips lips_. Red purred. 

Lance abruptly sat straighter, brining one knee up to his chest. “Yeah,” He laughed a little, a small near-hollow sound, before that knee started jiggling. “But I was a cargo pilot.”

It was like that first horrific sound of Black’s voice, Keith’s brain just whited out. “That’s a totally different skill. You have to have insane endurance, cargo pilots work like three times are much as the fighter class. And you have to actually know what you’re doing- I can just fly, you have to understand the thousand ways you could fuck up the weight or the drop after being in the air for twenty hours. An you were on scholarship”-

Lance’s mouth had dropped open.

Distantly, in reality present Keith marked this as the moment, possibly, Lance had decided not to hate him at face value. And cringed, as Lance finally spoke.

“You _do_ remember the rivalry,” He said slowly, tone odd. And then he grinned. “Lance and Keith, neck and neck. Red can judge.”

The Keith in the memory was cringing too.

In this second living of it however, he noticed that Lance wasn’t quite meeting his gaze anymore, fiddling with the attuned edge of gauntlets with quick, nimble fingers.

The cringe tangled with how badly he felt- he was going to get them all killed, he was alone, Shiro was alive, no one was looking for Shiro, he wanted to just go collapse in Red- but Red wasn’t his anymore, Lance said _lone wolf and cool_, like it was true, like it was an insult- and Keith’s voice came out strangled. “What? No.”

Answering angry color flared to life high on Lance’s cheeks.

They fell silent again, tense, as Keith finally gave in the urge to twist back his filthy hair. Lance was nearly the color of Red, jaw tight. 

Tiredly, Keith tried again. “I had like one friend at the Garrison, Lance. And he’s dead, so”-

All at once, Lance grabbed Keith’s forearm, painfully earnest. “No. We don’t know Shiro is dead. He could still be out there.”

Keith had been talking about _Matt_. Lance was so close, both his hands on Keith- when was the last time anyone had touched him when he wasn’t fighting?

He was so warm.

Slowly, Keith pulled away, shook his head. “When I went lights out- when we just stopped- Black was throwing me out of the connection.” Lance opened his mouth, but Keith shook his head again. “No, she was stopped me;_ because Shiro made her promise to keep me safe until he made it back_. Black says he’s alive.”

The Keith in reality sucked in a rattled breath as in the memory, Lance crushed Keith into a hug. Looped both the long arms around his neck and squeezed, Lance’s hair in his mouth, voice too-loud next to Keith’s ear.

“Keeeith!” He rocked them back and forth, chest plate painful along Keith’s front, “Why didn’t you say something? That’s amazing!"

A full fifteen seconds too late, Keith hugged him back, hands clutching the off shape of an armored waist. “Allura isn’t going to believe it,” He muttered, face full of sweaty curls that smelled like crushed leaves.

Lance wriggled back, not letting go but leaning until they were face to face. Keith’s heart was beating a tattoo in his chest, he silently thanked the universe for the armor.

“We’ll convince her,” Lance said, words brushing warm over Keith’s face like it was simple. “We’ll find him, Keith.”

With a whole different slam that was his head against the back of a pilot’s chair, Keith crashed back into the present moment with a groan. 

When the current moment held for longer than a heart beat, Keith wrestled out of the emergency restraints that had snapped him to the pilots chair at the planet’s initial pull. Freed, armed, every sensor dead but for a view of undulating lavender clouds, he went after Kosmo. 

Who it turned out was snoring, undisturbed, three feet away.

Keith started to laugh and abruptly couldn’t stop- the noise woke Kosmo, who teleported with a happy whuffle right at him, effectively knocking them both down. He accepted the slobbery kisses with slightly less hysteric mirth, wrapped arms around his enormous middle.

Kosmo who was from the Abyss, Kosmo who was somehow still growing, Kosmo who’d seen Lance’s face so many times in flashes from the back of the whale that he’d snuck away to sleep on his bed every other night on the Castleship. 

Keith ruffled the universes softest blue fuzzy ears. “Did you see all that too?”

He got an uncomfortably solid nose bump that was no less cute than when he’d been a handful of puppy in response before Kosmo teleported away again, doubtless back to napping.

Staying sprawled on the floor, Keith tried to take in all that dreaming light in a rational way. 

The Nexus Home was the setting of endless Galra fairytales. Stories for tiny children or- in Keith’s case, the stories Krolia told, apologizing they were the only ones she had memorized, after they’d finally exhausted the books Keith had illicitly downloaded from Castle archives onto his Marmoran data tablet.

It had been a nice break from arguing plans the Altean prince could have had when running away with his farm boy love, that didn’t involve yelmors. 

The purple at least, was accurate. 

The Blade had identified this planet as a probable candidate for being the Nexus, or _something_, early in the mystifying re-mapping of the cosmos. That purple mist poured off Quintessence with more force than a thousand deep space engines, but never ignited. 

It gleamed and took and_ gave_.

And happened to look eerily, perfectly like the illustration in one of the most commonly in print compendiums of tales.

The Nexus Home, the Place of Harmony, the Dreamers light, the Mirrored Land- it had more names than stories. A place where Galran heroes went on quests, where warriors sought answers before heading into the stars. Where no untruth could be, where the very light and air were made of divine purpose.

All Keith had been given was crash course in his own memories, more than enough of decade he’d known Lance to choke him.

But it wasn’t the Abyss.

_ It wasn’t the Abyss._

He’d get out, he’d stop floating. Matt or the Blades would come if he couldn’t escape. 

The next flash came without warning, dragging him deep into the darkness of night in spacecraft.

Petal soft, warm- and Keith wasn’t alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith: I literally infuriate Lance so much he's CHANGING COLOR
> 
> Lance, blushing: man-bun, man-bun, man-bun. SAD PURPLE EYES
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hru_Dzv1olM  
And a song for rivalry and a mutual, disastrous need to prove themselves


	4. Glimpsed and Seen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein the past and future might mean the same thing, Keith always knew first but Red always shipped it, and Allura is, in fact, laughing somewhere.

  
Any of Lance’s siblings would tell you he was _dramatic_.  
  
The truth wasn’t quite that, but it wore a similar shape. Growing up dead in the middle of a pack of sisters- distant, Garrison shooting star Veronica, laughing Kat who was half formed into the miniature, utterly dynamic knife collecting pastry chef she’d become when he was born, the adorable twins who followed two years after him- Lance had to learn to be _loud_.  


It came naturally to his sisters, especially Vero and Kat. An inborn flash, like their father’s booming laugh, voices and faces that drew the attention of every room.  


Lance, with his bisabuela’s eyes but his mother’s caramel skin and hair, was the opposite.   


He could cheer with the best of them a victory, a defeat. Absolutely was enthusiastic- Lance was always_ earnest, _something he learned to be embarrassed about young, bury in equal parts loudness and quiet, but relearned like a lifeline after going to war.  


He’d always had to try a little harder.  


It was this: his mama making a banner when he got the Garrison scholarship, his father telling anyone who’d listen about his brilliant, brilliant son who’d be a _scientist. _Lance got on in strategy, on physics, on years of perfect grades pursued until his hands shook.  


It was him laughing and saying _yeah, maybe I’ll discover a planet._

Not this is my ticket, this is my _chance- _all Lance had ever wanted was to touch the stars.

That feeling- every feeling- seemed so vast as the ocean his childhood was spent in, big enough to drown him if he let it.  


So he didn’t have the words, didn’t say anything but smile so hard his face ached, his insides melted and reformed, when he’d hung up on Shiro and Red had let Lance see the rest of the cockpit.  


Two guidance systems.

Two Bayard slots.  


_Two pilot seats_.

He was off-center, crumbling on the inside. When was the last time he felt this much of anything? A binary star jogged off orbit, getting colder and colder, losing pieces.  


It wasn’t _possible.  
_

Lance had always known there was something different about the way Red treated him and Keith. After the first shuffle of Lions, after Keith tried his hardest to get himself killed, after they’d slowly, tentatively figured out a balance- even now, Lance thought, _Keith knew I was top of my class_\- like co-leads, like_ partners_, Lance had finally let himself visit Blue.  


She didn’t talk back.  


And Lance thought, that’s alright- she knew he missed her, better, she’d know he was _okay_.  


So very okay he was guilty sometimes. Red had taken one look in his head, the circle of thoughts that said, second again,_ second choice again, just like the Garrison- _and obliterated them. Roared loud enough to rattle the entire hanger, shouted angry encouragements in his head for _days._

Love like Lance had always dreamed of, had grown up feeling, unconditional. He’d been friends with Blue, been adored in return, easy. 

Red was a new lung, learning to use a limb Lance hadn’t known he possessed; a boundless love, where freedom could have been the stand-in word.   


But with loud words and sharp asides, awkward playfulness and complete stubbornness- it was, he learned, exactly what being close to Keith was like.  


And he knew Keith had still visited Red. That she missed him when he was gone the same as she missed Lance- extra confusion, almost as much as Lance himself learned to miss Keith.   


There was an echo in the bond when they spoke. He didn’t mind it, didn’t he send things to silent Blue too? Odder, was when he could feel her talking to Keith in battle, in flight, but Lance understood it.  


Piloting Black was _hard_\- physically different in a way that left you feeling terrible and light. She needed greater Quintessence then; took so much more from her pilot before they knew she was holding Shiro’s soul in safety. He had to watch Keith cycle through migraines and nosebleeds, come out of long battles frozen and shaking.   


How could Lance begrudge Red trying to help? He wanted to help Keith too.   


_Wanted_\- god, he hadn’t even known what. Whatever Keith would let him do. Whatever he could do beyond helping Keith hide from the other’s when he came out of Black a mess, trying to figure out together the increasingly complicated war effort with Shiro gone, Allura coalition-mired, and Lotor quiznaking everywhere.  


He kept it together- they’d kept it together- until a skirmish turned into a more than four hour battle, spent as Voltron. 

Red was pumping adrenaline in his veins to keep him upright, heat and warmth as he slumped in the pilots seat and wrestled off sweaty armor until she murmured, carefully quiet, _Leandro, run_.  


Red’s hanger was on the opposite side of the Lion’s bay’s than Blue, right next to Black. Still, Lance was out of breath by the time he skidded on bare feet through the doors. No sign of Keith, just Red murmuring._ Here. He’s here, Akira._   


In English, Lance finally noticed- lower than he’d ever heard her, had she been talking to them both this whole time?  


He didn’t hear Keith’s reply- didn’t know if it were_ possible_ for him to- but Black’s mouth opened. 

Red armor, horrifically pale face against the monolith of Black, Lance didn’t need Red’s prompting to race forward, reaching as Keith wavered forward. He caught himself on Lance’s arms, iron grip steadier than his lolling head.  


_Lance always wanted to catch him.   
_

_“Keith,”_ Lance had been shot and burned, stabbed and lost in the vacuum of space, but every time-_ every single goddamned time- _one of the others got hurt were the parts that gave him nightmares.  


All he got in reply was Keith’s head hitting his collar bone with a groan.  


Lance could feel the warmth of his breath through the thin fabric of his undersuit. Too hot, too fast- Keith who infuriatingly could run miles, Keith who never wavered, was rattling his entire body just trying to breathe.   


An infinite voice, feminine through the sheer rumble, echoed through Lance’s head. _Be well Paladins. Be well, Akira._ And then, softer still, like Red’s careful murmur, _Rest Akira, you must rest.  
_

Lance froze. Swallowed. Didn’t allow his grip to slip as Black’s voice burned through his head, just familiar enough to wound.   


“Helmet off, okay?” Lance said, choking down his panic. He shifted until Keith was staying upright by leaning into Lance’s side, used the free hand to pull at his armor and found blood. “_Fuck_. Keith, buddy, what hurts?”  


Keith made a horrible, pained noise and straightened. “Hit my head when we landed,” He wobbled, didn’t even blink at the crash of Lance dropping his helmet to catch him.   


The bruise on his hairline was probably the most dangerous, but the bottom half of Keith’s face smeared with dry and fresh blood, was what scared him the most. Keith listed, terrifyingly didn’t complain when Lance wrapped both arms around him in a facsimile of a hug. For all the heated shudder of labored breath, his skin was ice cold to the touch.  


“Red,” Lance carefully said, quiet in the face of Keith’s obvious concussion, “Can you help?”  


Red made a rumbled noise that could have meant anything, soft like the barbed lick of a kitten. _Keep him warm_. And then garbled with pictures from his own memories._ Close. Safe_.  


Lance silently cursed, Keith was a bloody, limp weight against him. “Contact helps?”  


_Contact,_ Red repeated. _Life. Quintessence. Rest paladins, warm-alive-together.  
_

He wasn’t going to allow himself time to think what that meant, not with Keith incoherent and hurting. He’d listen, he’d keep him awake, keep him safe, but first they needed to make it to the medbay. “Keith, hey, can you hear me?”  


“Lance,” He groaned, finally looking up. Bloodshot dark eyes blinked at Lance, out of focus. “Pidge?”  


Horrifically, Lance had been at this long enough to know what he meant. “Pidge is already in her rooms,” He told him, carefully maneuvering them into a walking position, taking as much of Keith’s weight as he could, “Hunk went to shower and make food, Allura’s on the bridge with Coran, it’s just us.”  


Gamely, Keith lurched forward when Lance stepped. “Just us.”

It took painful minutes to get down the ramp, enough time that Keith’s nose had begun to sluggishly bleed again. He didn’t even wipe it, just kept dragging himself forward, favoring his right side in a way that completely failed to hide whatever injury he hadn’t admitted.  


They were halfway across the hanger, a staggering rhythm established when Red’s warmth and strength flared back up in Lance’s chest. A soft sigh told him Keith felt it too before he could ask, steps steadying.  


Red got them to the medbay. Lance wrestled Keith into a pod, after three more assurances it was just him- he’d be there, no one else would see, just them- to let cryo repair the exhaustion and fever, three cracked ribs and concussion.   


And then because his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stop feeling the weight of Keith falling, Lance lied to Allura about when he’d be out of the pod. Raided the extra soft crazy space fleece blanket storage and dragged a pile to Keiths bedroom. Stole pillows from the lounge and put on his softest clothes, only allowed himself five minutes to hyperventilate in the dark Paladin quarters hallway.  


Six hours later, halfway into the ship’s night cycle, Lance caught Keith as the pod opened.  


Lance steadied him carefully, before shoving his hands deep into hoodie pockets before he did something insane like _hold on and never let go. “_Hey Samurai, how’s your head?”  


Almost certainly despite himself, Keith’s lips quirked. He ran an absent hand through his hair, sweeping back the overlong strands with a disgusted noise, “Covered in blood, apparently. What happened? Is everyone okay?”  


Prepared for this, Lance pulled a sealed Altean medical towel out of his pocket and tossed it to Keith. Silk thin and eerily moist once touched, they’d learned there was nothing they couldn’t clean- blood, poisonous pollen, ten thousand year old Altean makeup.   


Keith caught it one handed with a murmured thanks.  


“Everyones fine,” Lance told him, swallowing as Keith scrubbed the blood from his forehead. A half seconds glance and Lance gesturing at his own face had him wiping at the rest, grimacing as the towel came away wrecked. “You don’t remember?”  


Keith shook his head as they started to walk. “I remember coming up to the bay doors,” He tossed the towel into a medical waste bin before the doors soundlessly opened for them, “Nothing after that."  


By silent agreement, or perhaps because Keith was as bone tired as he looked, they made their way together toward Keith’s room. He was listing a little still- Lance wanted to reach out and grab him more than anything else.  


He knew the concussion was healed. That quintessence exhaustion needed sleep, needed- Red’s voice clanged through his head again: _Warm, close, safe. _And then, smug as a cat could sound,_ contact.  
_

Lance would give Keith anything he needed-not that Keith would ask.  


They’d arrived before Lance realized he’d never answered.  


He followed Keith into the low lit room, mouth open only to turn and find Keith staring at him. Thoughtfully, head-tilted. Face more bare than usual with the blood and grime keeping his hair back- _of course he has perfect eyebrows_, Lance thought- the absence of bangs confirming his long suspicion that Keith’s face was an absurdly lovely heart-shape, widows peak deep.   


“Did you carry me to the pod?”  


“What?_ No_,” Lance answered much, much too fast. He rubbed an awkward hand of the back of his neck, “I helped you in, you had a pretty bad concussion. It seemed like you didn’t want me to get Allura or the others,_ but_”-  


Keith interrupted him with a solid grip on his wrist. “_Lance,” _He said, meeting his gaze head-on. “It’s fine. I_ didn’t_\- thank you.”  


In real sunlight those eyes were a rich blue-purple. Lance sometimes thought he should have known all along Keith was more than human, made for the stars- who the _hell _had true violet eyes? In dark, now, the color gleamed indistinct. Oil-slick eyes, just as beautiful.  


Lance made himself grin. “Hey, anytime fearless leader.”  


Keith kept looking at him for a long heartbeat before releasing his wrist. Lance pretended he hadn’t felt the last squeeze- gentle, Keith’s thumb on his pulse. _A thank you_\- not affection, it wasn’t anything, obviously.  


The face he got in return was one it had taken Lance _years _to learn meant Keith was trying not to smile.   


“I’m going to shower,” Keith announced, somewhat suddenly. Lance was so tired he wasn’t sure which of them was being _terrible_ at this conversation. He opened his mouth to say so, but Keith kept going, too even. “Do you want to stay? Still need to tell me what happened.”  
He sounded _odd._  


Not that Lance couldn’t relate to the off-kilter, half terrifying feeling of waking up in a healing pod with no knowledge of how he got there.   


Nonetheless, he found himself having to swallow before answering. “Yeah. Sure, I’ll be right here.” He tapped the wall next to him for good measure, immediately regretting the gesture as Keith’s eyebrows came together. _What was he doing?  
_

_“_Okay,_” _Keith nodded and stepped past him, kneeling briefly before a storage cabinet. He cast Lance one more long glance over his shoulder before leaving the room.  


Alone, Lance stared at the inset lights for several moments too long. Their rooms were identical, what had once been guest barracks of Altean soldiers. Same just barely big enough bed, closet and storage mirror image placed. The same opaque space not-glass pale bathroom door, even the same smell as steam and the sharply green scent of Altean shampoo drifted into the room.  


It was the details that made it Keiths: that atrocious red leather jacket hanging by the door, Garrison precisely tucked-in blankets, weapons from three different planets scattered around the room, a tiny Olkarian houseplant shelved next to his bed.  


He’d changed the lights somehow. Where Altean teal-blue streaked Lance’s wall, Keith had a deep gold, warm as candlelight.   


It was _unbearably_ homey.   


Which seemed so out of place, so _unexpected, _Lance immediately felt like a shithead. Staggering forward, he half fell into the monstrous pillow blanket pile Lance thrown through the door earlier. Had he ever been in Keith’s bedroom before today?   


_No- _because Lance avoided his own yawningly blank room as much as possible, one door away from here.   


When their insomnia overlapped as it did so often now- Keith had barely slept before Shiro went missing, now he seemed to be more than half nocturnal- they wandered the Castle. It had taken three accidental kitchen run-ins to start just meeting, less than a week before Keith showed Lance the best space viewing rooms the others didn’t know about and Lance obliging taught him how to get in the ceiling pool in exchange.   


He was pretty sure they were friends now.   


Which was a definite upgrade from unexpected coworkers who’d kill for each other.   


Kill and fight and bleed- even after scrubbing, there was a little of Keith’s blood under his thumbnail, a stain.   


Looking at it, he let himself topple sideways with a groan. Sitting down at all had been a mistake, Lance was exhausted. If he closed his eyes, he might never move again, the mix of familiar and comfortable a downright dangerous lull.   


“Did you take apart the lounge again?”  


Lance shot upright, heart jumping to double time. “Keith!”  


“Lance,” Keith said dryly, shifting wet hair over one shoulder, letting it drip all _down_\- at this point, blinking, Lance acknowledged that his brain left the room- where had Keith gotten a tank top that _tight_? 

Black, sleeveless like a dancers cut of their paladin undersuits paired with- _yoga pants_?  


_Was this what Keith had been sleeping in all along, while Lance touted the coziness of colored coded sack pajamas?  
_

_“Cold,” _He blurted, before swallowing and trying again. “Red said you might be cold?”  


Keith crossed the room, Lance’s eyes absurdly pinging on the fact that he was _barefoot,_slender ankles and bare feet. 

“Yeah,” He said simply, before sinking down on his knees into the pillow blanket mountain. He pulled out a fleece cloud comforter and Lance was distracted from trying to arrange his face in a way that didn’t scream_ since fucking when do Keith’s arms look like that, _by Keith tossing it over them both.  


_“Wha”-  
_

“You were shivering,” Keith replied, tugging on a second blanket until it was untangled enough to drape over both their shoulders. Finally, with a sigh, he scooted closer, arms brushing.

It had taken maybe half a minute, but Keith had made them_ a god damned blanket cocoon._   


In back of his mind, Red rumbled, the loudest approximation of her purr. From the hairbreadth of a startle that rocked Keith into him- _Jesus Christ that stupid tank top was soft_\- he heard it too.  


“She said you were,” Lance started and stopped, waved one hand, because Red hadn’t used words, just pressed_ close _and _warm _and _falling apart _like an incontrovertible plan into his head.  


Keith seemed to get it, shrugging one shoulder.   


This close, hair pushed back, it was impossible not to notice how tired he looked. The circles beneath Keith’s eyes were almost as dark as his gaze themselves, stark as a bruise. New scar a purpled line on his neck from a fight last week, frown line between his eyebrows grown to a permanent crease.  


Not that he looked _bad_\- Keith was infuriatingly handsome at all times, as far as Lances years of acquaintanceship could tell.   


But he was worn thin, a tangible stress looming around him.  


He looked_ sad_.  


“Everyone’s fine,” Lance told him, watching Keith’s furrowed brow, “Yellow’s armor absorbed that cruiser hit alright, so Hunk’s okay. Pidge only has bruises, Allura’s the only one who really got hurt besides you, broke her wrist and Blue took some damage.”  


Keith nodded, looking away.  


On someone else, the gesture might have silenced Lance. He’d learned however, with surprise and then a growing comfort that_ he did not think about _that Keith was pretty much always listening. He was quiet, but only because he meant the things he said.  


“Black crashed into the hanger. The Castle logged it, but we worm-holed right after, no one felt it.Should probably have Pidge”-  


“It was me,” Keith interrupted.  


Lance turned completely to face him, in time to watch Keith clench the blanket in both hands. “She’s not- I’m not really her paladin.” He shook his head, a fresh cascade of water droplets racing down his neck. “It never hurt Shiro to pilot Black.”  


“You’re a good leader,” Lance stressed, before bumping Keith’s knee with his own, “Don’t quote me on that. But you _are_\- you understand what we have to do to keep moving forward. So what if you’re the Red paladin? Blacks pilot is still alive out there, we’re going to find him.”  


He meant it, not just about Shiro. More than any of them, Keith had seemed like he _belonged_ to Red; loyalty and impulse and temper, how could he be anything but the guardian of fire?  


Keith was staring at him again.  


Before he could say anything, however, Red roared through their heads again, a soundless affection and_ mine_. Lance caught the echo this time, that her words reached them both.  


A little bit of the exhaustion seemed to drain from Keith’s face. Both of them- Red cared for them both, and together, they’d do this. It didn’t matter then that Lance was rootless, or that Keith was ready to tear himself apart for some semblance of a victory.  


It felt like they’d survive it_ together_, no matter the broken pieces._  
_

So it had been easy, not ever on the table, that Lance might resent what was the near-legendary love Red had for Keith, like the other’s sometimes assumed. She’d save Lance just the same if he needed it- but Keith _needed it._

He’d had to say as much to Allura more than once. Tried to shift the conversation to Blue, only for her to blink those pink-teal-blue rainbow beautiful eyes at him. 

“Lance,” She’d sighed, the sound long as only Allura made them; _Looonce.   
_

She’d explained that Blue couldn’t speak to him. The Lionbond was two way: while you could still fall out of the drift piloting, or the Lions might choose to accept temporary aid, the part each of the Paladin’s carried around in their heads was continual. A lock, in a way, on their quintessence.   


Their _individual _quintessence.  


And he just nodded. Listened and let her tell him with great enthusiasm all about how personal the Lionbond was, like Lance wasn’t a paladin twice over, like Red wasn’t burning at that very moment deep in his soul at Allura’s instructive tone.  


She’d snarked, _princess not paladin. _And, mystifying then but alarmingly real now, _more than Altean cubs.  
_

Red rumbled now, sublimely happy. _Paladins. My Paladins. Your paladin. _It was a blur, unhelped by her perfect, increased speed that had a laugh spilling from his mouth even as she kept mentally shouting at him. Planets, stars, the whole saved universe wheeling by his head, under his feet. _Leandro. Akira. Yours. Mine. Akira, Akira, Akira. Leandro.  
_

He hadn’t let himself think what it might mean, that their souls were made of the same starstuff.   


_“_Red,” Lance managed to say, holding onto the consul for dear life as she spun dervishs through open space, staggering sideways, “Can we both fly together?”

She forcefully directed his attention to what he was already looking at, the two pilot chairs. _Silly stupid kitten, _she said before knocking him straight to the floor. _Together._

It was a snort, if a feline impossible war machine were capable of such a thing.   


He’d adored Blue- wanted to be liquid, ease and grace, those ocean fathoms that a younger Lance could murmur his secrets to. It had never occurred to him that all that water had a different purpose: salt water in Lances veins, the sun’s heat down to his bones.  


Born of watery depths, Lance was made for fire. 

***

He came awake slowly.  


The Keith that was still himself, drowning in past and future, bit the inside of his cheek as his whole body helplessly heated. Still in his ship in it’s impossible floating fall as he was living the memory- _memory, how was this a memory_\- groped for and failed to feel the cool floor of a not quite standard Marmoran ship beneath his palms.  


_How _was this a slice of the Abyss’s possible future? He hadn’t been awake- Keith had thought this entire time he’d dreamt what he was feeling now.  


Warmth.  


Soul deep and immediately familiar to the Keith who hadn’t lived this, the bite of night cycle spacecraft air tempered and made perfect by the body next to him, warm breath near his face. Barely awake, eyes shut Keith turned into the pillow and slowly registered the soft slide of fingertips up his spine. Over ribs, across his hip, up again- butterfly touches over bare skin. 

Consciousness was an equally slow, perfect drag.  


Keith, who woke up on a hair trigger. Somewhere between the desert and space war and back again he’d gained an instant awareness that had he him nearly punching Shiro more than one at unexpected wake up.  


But_ this_ Keith- _that impossible fucking bastard_\- just like real Keith, knew that body, even in sleep.  


What was foreign was the noise that came from the back of his throat, seemed to grow from his entire chest with unabashed pleasure. The soft perfect touches didn’t pause, but the legs tangled in Keith’s shifted, pressed long limbs closer.   


He was smiling before he opened his eyes.  


The Keith in reality was cognizant enough to fight the dreaming pull this time. He didn’t want to see-_ he didn’t want to feel_\- he knew what was coming. Pounding a fist on the cool ships floor did nothing, feeling of neither the motion or impact reaching him, but Keith tried.  


He _knew_-  


The hand on his spine drifted higher, nails scraping delicately through Keith’s scalp. “I know you’re awake,” A voice smug murmured, pleased.  


He knew what happened next, but it still felt like a punch to the solar plexus for _real Keith_ as he opened one sleepy eye, and saw Lance.  


Blue gaze bright in faint light, closer than they’d ever been in reality. The veritable mountain of blankets they were under had fallen with the movement of Lance’s arm, one smoothly tan shoulder a taunt to the acres of bare skin and lean muscle Keith was tangled in.  


Drunk with happiness, half awake and impossibly comfortable, Keith distantly clocked that there was no way in hell the look he was giving Lance wasn’t muddled golden. Maybe this Lance already knew that, the way strong emotions made Keith look Galra more and more with age.   


Maybe this Lance didn’t care.  


In the memory more than he was in his real body, Keith was more concerned with the line between Lance’s eyebrows. He rolled fully to face him, unabashed to settle back into closeness. “Ask.”  


Quicksilver, Lance’s real smile twisted his mouth. “Ask?”  


Keith- like his hands had itched to do a thousand times, who’d wanted to soothe and shout at Lance that he was worth something a _thousand god damned times- _rubbed at the line on Lance’s brow.  


In fights, when the world fell away and they just worked together, Keith and Lance had never needed words. Apparently, in the _time fuckery impossible reality_, they didn’t either, but Keith sought them out anyway.  


Lance shook his head, a different sort of smile on his face. Crowded forward just a little more until their noses almost touched, the same pillow under their heads. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, gaze roving Keith’s face.  


When he’d thought it was a dream this part had been indistinct- he’d remembered the waking up, been unable to forget what came after this conversation, but feeling every second of it again Keith could hear the silent question. The delicacy living in this space between them.  


All around them, the ship hummed, on course through a field of stars.   


Curling into Keith’s neck, Lance huffed a laugh, “I’m preparing myself to fight off love scorned Blades after seducing their prince commander.”  


“Duels, _Admiral McClain_?” Keith tucked his cheek to Lance’s, inhaling the coconut scent of his hair. “You say that like _anyone_”-  


“You’re fucking gorgeous, it’s not impossible”-  


“I told you,” Keith said, simply, because it _was_, “I don’t like casual.”  


Lance’s grin was tangible against his skin.   


“Lucky you,” His voice rasped, sending a thrill down the spine of every version of Keith that existed, “Since I was told on good authority last night that I’ve never managed to do something casual_ in my life- _which,_ which,_ I have seen you dive into active volcanos, Keith_. And”-_

“Lucky me,” Keith agreed, stopping the flow of words rambled against his jaw.   


Clearer than when it was a dream, the perfect replay of the Abyss’s power let Keith know things; this was their bed, their ship. Not new, but not so old that he could fully believe it was happening yet.  


It was herculean effect to think, not to focus on living the feel of that half-known but older body in his arms.   


To shake off the knowledge that_ he got this. _  


But current Keith had fracture lines, and he knew what came next.  


The muffled burst of laughter from Lance when Keith rolled them, slotting neatly on top of Lance and helplessly tangling the blankets. Whipcord strong arms draping over his neck with a languor that said _familiar_, said _this is mine. _Long legs kicking through soft fabric for the freedom to tangle around Keiths hips- he might have started it, but Lance was holding on.  
This sleep-soft early morning late night version of Lance’s laugh that Keith knew and loved, swallowed down as he kissed soft lips. Lance’s response was to drag him even closer, one hand ghosting back into his hair to _pull_. 

But it was Lance who hissed, “_Menace_,” Against Keith’s lips, “You absolute menace, Kogane."  


Held fast in a cage made of Lance’s torturously long limbs, knowing perfectly well that every bit of what had led them here to be grinding sleepily against each other, what might as well have been a thousand acres of bare human warmth making Keith’s skin sing, had been the best of their joint efforts, Keith grinned.   


“You woke me up,” He said, dropping a kiss on the corner of Lance’s mouth, nosing down to his cheek.  


The next laugh shook them both. “You were kissing my neck!”  


That Keith hid his smile beneath Lance’s jaw wasn’t a coincidence. He nuzzled the faintly reddened mark that would be a bruised by morning, heart swelling with an almost painful amount of affection as Lance’s happiness morphed into a sigh, going plaint beneath him.  


“_Keith_,” He breathed. “You’re completely right, I love that. In fact, let’s never move again. Ever.”  


He nodded, knowing Lance would feel it. “Kogane-McClain household, population two. Rich in pillows,” Keith punctuated the words with another kiss, sliding down to catch the hollow of Lance’s throat with his teeth, “Will trade away extra blankets for more lube.”  


“_Keith,_” Lance laughed, sounding more awake with every breath.  


Propping his chin up with one hand, Keith sat up enough to catch Lance’s gaze. Blushing, the shadows gone from his face. That Keith could make him look like that was almost as incredible as the fact that he was here at all.  


Galaxies away, the real Keith thrashed against the light’s hold. _He didn’t want_\- he already knew, he didn’t need to be _ruined_-  


While Keith was looking at Lance, Lance was looking _back_.  


There was no hurry to the motion, which somehow made it worse. Deliberate, as Lance rolled his hips. Electrifying the soft warmth away as he hooked a leg higher- _familiar, this Keith remembered the thrill of that easy flexibility- _pulled Keith closer- _this Keith knew the feel of Lance’s pretty cock, knew the press of every inch of him- _and said Keith’s name again, just in time to interrupt the groan growing in his throat.  


“Let me touch you,” Lance murmured, soft, big blue eyes asking. “Let me touch you, Keith.”  


No version of Keith would have wanted to say no, but this Keith knew what Lance wanted. He pulled them in place again, rolling without disturbing too much of Lance’s grip until they were face to face on their sides.   


“_Yeah_,” He whispered, barely a word, the sound of his own voice an agony to his distant present self. “Touch me.” At Lance’s fingertips ghosting over his stomach soft enough to make him shudder, Keith pressed closer, their foreheads brushing. “_Baby_.”  


Lance’s blush was instant, delicate cheekbones a near Lion-red.   


It was fast, messy, but suspended so for both the disconnected versions of Keith for seconds to stretch. Lance, moaning into his mouth- hands working together, the angle probably wrong, but it didn’t matter, _it didn’t matter- Lance trying to drag him so close neither could move the way they wanted to- Keith crooning all the while Baby- Baby that’s so good, you feel so good, Lance, Lance-  
_

Keith fell out of the memory to stinging pain.  


Dimly, he noted that he’d hit the floor hard enough to split several knuckles, checked for breaks and damage with a numb distance.   
He was breathing too hard. 

Loud, in the normally quiet cockpit, louder for the lack of engine noise. No combustion, no music, no life left in the ship he’d stolen from a pirate three years previous before refitting it for Blade work.   


Nothing but Keith and magic quintessence nightmare mist- _dreaming light_, he grumbled under his breath- and the knowledge that everything it had shown him had either happened already, or been a replay of Abyss’s visions, future and past laid bare.  


The more than four years he’d thought isolation gave him particularly detailed sex dreams had been easier.  


Of all the legends to be true. Allura and Lotor had breathed magic back into the world: the Luxite caves of Shallagra, a myth until last year. Mir’ya’ii, a planet of nothing but wildflowers, where pilgrims claimed they could go to sleep and dream meetings with their ancestors. Singing seas, monsters, juniberry fields blooming the color of the Voltron Lions, Coran’s ageless eyes- a thousand miracles, a hundred myths.  


Keith scrubbed over his feverish face. Clenched both his hands when he realized his fingertips were shaking, volatile heat like a second pulse. 

“Allura,” He felt stupid speaking to the open air, but honestly, how much further could he fall today? There was a surfeit of evidence that she not only listened, but helped. “I know, okay? I had a shot, we missed it. I don’t”- 

It was hard to say aloud, even to himself. It wasn’t like everyone he knew_ didn’t _know. For godsake, the best selling paladin merch in half the known universe was the Red Lion that came with figures of both him and Lance, dressed in matching armor that had never existed, complete with detachable Galra mate amulets.   


He’d had three years to accept that the only person who hadn’t known how he felt was the only one that mattered.   


“I wasn’t- if you’re watching this_ isn’t funny_.” Keith stood, stormed to his emergency supply cache. He could smell juniberry perfume and blaster ozone, couldn’t decide if it was some kind of wishful hallucination or not. Humiliation of multiple varieties was rattling inside him. “Love you, miss you, please don’t let this stupid planet kill me.”  


Emergency landing pack pulled out, Keith strapped it on and whistled for Kosmo.  


The ship was barely moving, a slow drift he couldn’t be sure was taking the time it felt. Theoretically, the quintessence only came from the mist, the most mysterious part of the stories. Once through it, the planet _should_ be just a planet- a beautiful, insane, godforsaken fairytale planet- and Keith would take his chances with it.  


Maybe if he landed hard enough he’d forget what Lances mouth felt like.  


His version of a Blade suit could withstand a blackhole- it wouldn’t feel great, but Keith wouldn’t _die_\- and Kosmo knew to teleport to the ground. He told him to aloud anyway, just to be sure, and was treated to an aggressive nose bump in response.   


Keith stomped down the emergency door release. 

No wind, no pressure, none of the deadly characteristics of space. Lilac light undulated, glimmers of gold and pink in it’s clouded depths. The complete absence of noise should have been haunting, but the light _moved_ like music, it’s quintessence warm, reaching for Keith, tendrils of sunlight soaking through armor.   


In the back of his mind, the first memory tried to unfurl again: neon pink on tousled curls, sugared heat, a humid summer night- Keith jumped.   


The Dreaming Light that shows heroes the way didn’t let him fall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the rating has changed! More explicit content will be featured later in the story. Thank you for reading :)


	5. Beginning before the Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adashi wedding vol. 1 Feat. Thirst and Klance in planetary orbit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important fact: Adashi wedding colors were cream and pale pastel pink. Shiro wore white, Adam wore black: the Wahim-Shiroganes are babes.
> 
> Remember how Matt lowkey hates Lance? Does not predate Lance curb-stomping Keith's heart in Cuba
> 
> Lance, on the other hand: Matty! MATTY- did he just touch his shoulder? the shoulder I was just touching- like bros, obviously- and to demonstrate that I am The Better Bro I will Platonically lean my entire body on Keith. See, shoulders? Mine
> 
> Also Lance, three hours and several more shots of tequila later: HUNK KEITH CAN THROW ME- HE THROW- ARMS! Arms, Hunk

Fifteen year old Keith hadn’t believed anything about the Garrison.  


Fourteen when he met Shiro and Adam- and _Matt_\- he might have begrudgingly trusted them, but officers? 

The General in charge of the space installation who he met exactly twice: watching footage of Keith flying a speeder that the Garrison never figured out or didn’t care was stolen and speaking over his head to a social worker to say _we need those reflexes, kids got the eyes_ and once horrifically by accident in a hallway. An exchange of salutes that Keith still felt vaguely humiliated by, and then the head of the entire space program _greeted him by name in a hallway full of other students.  
_

He found out later he was being _checked up on.  
_

Adam had admitted it through gritted teeth and immediately shoved a bowl of cookie dough at him, but Keith wasn’t surprised. Shiro had stolen the spoon he was using to make rounds and ruffled his hair, halfway through the fury and flinging dough down hard enough chocolate chips went flying.  


He’d reminded Keith,_ they’ve never seen anyone fly like you, I would have crashed ten times before you brought it down in the water.  
_

Adam_,_ smiling and throwing chocolate chips back into the bowl chimed in,_ twenty times, old man. _Collectively, they’d eyed Shiro’s prematurely grey hair, silver already sneaking into his bangs then.

It was okay. Shiro never, ever lied to him and Adam never, ever assumed he was angry for no reason.  


But he’d also known what it meant.  


Keith had been an orphan for more than half his life- he didn’t question the _why _anymore. He knew who he was: someone without any fallbacks waiting for him. Better than perfect vision, eyes that weren’t bothered by the dark, a heart that _sang_ in flight.  


He’d never been as good at anything, as happy, as he was piloting.  


Keith had his talent- it wasn’t a stretch to know that to the Garrison, he _was_ that talent. He didn’t have capacity to waver, to slowdown or pause, he_ had_ to be the best.Texas dust still settled in his lungs, the South he couldn’t escape like a spectre, defiance that had made him impossible to shake off.

There wasn’t anywhere else Keith could go.  


But sometimes, slowly, thoughts snuck in about graduating. The Garrison was, despite it’s many overtures otherwise, a military school. Pilots had to start young, spaceflight took years of training, but eventually that structured life gave way to adulthood.  


Normally fighter pilots were tapped at sixteen, eligible for space at twenty. Keith had been scooped up at fourteen- he’d never been headed for anything but the stars.  


Eventually, he’d be in space.  


Eventually, maybe, Keith would have room to breathe.  


_With that came-  
_

He never said it all out loud, but the thoughts went something like this: Matt would moan, _why is everyone pretty. _And Keith would think about blue, blue eyes.  


Matt was in love without someone new every week when they were kids, but all three of the people he actually spoke to knew Keith was stuck- angrily, _frustratingly_, infuriatingly- stuck on a sky-eyed cadet in the cargo pilot class.  


_Taylor McClain._  


It took more than a year for him to realize it was _Tailor_\- a nickname that didn’t make any sense to Keith._ Lance _came later. _Leandro Alvaro Dalian Espinosa McClain_, only after years of war.  


At fifteen, the equally distant desires started to bleed together.  


He’d get to participate fully in the deep space vehicle development program like Shiro did. He’d bounce back and forth from upper orbit and earth, or be stationed on the moon, or even the Martian space port, one foot in the unknown.  


Get out of cadet orange and being the _weird emo loner kid. _Graduate with every other pilot his age, no names standing between _Kogane_ and _McClain_. 

Maybe he’d say_ congratulations, _and Lance would recognize him when they ran into each other in Garrison bases. Maybe he’d smile when he saw Keith. Maybe they’d get married. Maybe they’d get stationed on Mars together, take shore leave staring out into the cosmos, hand in hand, a gold ring that matched Lance’s skin on his finger that Keith had put there.  


Maybe, maybe, maybe- there were only three real things Keith had ever let himself want before Voltron.  


To get to keep Shiro and Adam. To claw his way to the stars and never leave.  


And Lance McClain.  


That was what the Dreaming Light of Kral’ax’zyan gave him.  


Memories, future, past- it was every best part of his life lived, everything Keith had ever longed for. He was living _memories_, he was living his_ life_\- he wasn’t a body- he was so, so alive, feeling every moment- he was-

Leaning against the ribbon festooned bar at the _Shinto-Buddhist-Muslim-Altean lifebonding ceremony _extravaganza that was Adam and Shiro’s wedding, laughing at the look on Lance’s face.  


Blue eye’s over-bright from crying at the ceremony, he was six feet of temptation poured into a pale grey suit.  


Keith wasn’t even pretending not to watch the smooth bob of his throat, swallowing down a honey colored liquor.  


“I can’t believe it,” Lance insisted, shoulder resting warm against Keith’s. They were right on the cusp- something, _something_, finally just before the start. They’d won the war, they were on Earth, Lance had sought him nearly every day since the Abyss- everything was coming home. “Are they _Lindy-hopping?”  
_

Twelve feet away, Shiro and Adam had cut a swath through aliens and humans alike, matching grins almost as bright as the flush they were both beginning to sport. No one was getting in the way of their giddy- and Keith knew- _deadly _competitive steps.

“Yep,” Keith dragged his eyes back in time to catch Lance taking another drink, mouth twisting at the taste. While he wouldn’t normally roast his brother, he had just made a joint best man speech about both the grooms that had made Hunk start crying all over, so he didn’t feel too bad leaning closer to ask, “Didn’t you ever seen Shiro dance in space?”  


Lance, also a younger sibling, recognized the tone if not the topic. “On Puig, I guess? With the spinning?”  


“Shiro loves dance moves.” It was impossible not to notice that if he was leaning down, Lance had raised his face to meet him. “Ask Matt, he has of video of him doing the one”-

Here, Keith shifted his hips and motioned rigidly with his free arm until Lance got it, face slipping into a hypnotically bright grin.  


“_Keith_, _no- that is the best”-_ He took an overlarge mouthful of his drink and choked. “Fuck, why are we drinking this? Please, please tell me Matt will share. _Please._”_  
_

With confidence that surprised him- maybe he was susceptible to earth liquor after all- Keith slid the tumbler out of Lance’s hand and back onto the bar, brushing warm fingertips. 

“You ordered it,” He said, trying not to sound unbearably fond.  


Lance, thankfully, laughed- the smaller, realer laugh Keith privately thought most people didn’t get to hear- “I hate champagne. And these suits are way too nice to drink beer.”  


_Too nice_\- Keith agreed. Adam had known what he was doing when he foisted tailored, cool drink of water grey on Lance. And they’d let Keith wear red. Not paladin bright, but a deep maroon whose faint sheer matched Lance’s.  


Keith shifted to eye the towering glass bar- and the four armed blue barkeeper, who winked at him- before raising an eyebrow. “Tequila?”  


_“Tequila_,” Lance agreed, and then shook his head. “Remind me why I ever thought letting you meet my sister was a good idea.”  


Keith gestured at the correct bottle, flashing two fingers before turning fully back to Lance. “So I could learn to shoot?”  


A shoulder bumped up against his, harder this time. He wasn’t sure what it was exactly- more than two years of missing everyone, learning where he came from- but he’d stopped shying away. Wasn’t that long after Keiths cataclysmic homecoming that Lance’s casual affection started, and never stopped.  


Lance grumbled at him, “Wound me, Keith,” And then, quieter, big blue eyes finding his. “I know you can shoot when it counts.”  


They’d never talked about the fight with Zethrid. How Lance had charged in just in time to get stabbed, to find Keith- drugged and bleeding from a head wound- losing badly. It had _counted _alright; Galra dagger in his stomach, Lance had thrown his Bayard to Keith.  


He still didn’t know what Lance had _intended_\- the curved red sword Keith had fought with before he flew Black?  


What he got instead was_ Lance’s form. _Not Keith’s, not the Bayard going null as it should have in anyone but its Paladin’s hands, but a rifle.  


Keith had made it count.  


“Good thing I usually have a sharpshooter.”  


Lance’s smile cut across his thoughtful face before he turned, whooping, to watch Shiro and Adam dance past.  


The reality of his introduction to Vero, which had turned into the oddest breakfast of his life, was deep on the secret, insane list that Keith sometimes ran through his head of this is happening,_ this is happening._

Lance had introduced them, but Veronica- _Vero_, she insisted, for family- had privately bullied Keith into going to brunch with her. 

What proceeded was one of the odder hours of his life: Lance's oldest sister ordering a pitcher of mimosa’s, forcing waffles on him with a bewildering intensity, and then telling him all of Lance’s likes and dislikes and habits- _pancakes over waffles_,_ especially if he’s hungover- pretty sure space made him afraid of the dark- literally always sunburns- loves tequila and really dark royal blue and his mama and flying and horses and motorcycles- don’t let him talk down on himself- don’t let him dodge the Garrison titles. Allergic to strawberries and penicillin, used to bite his nails. Lee-AN-dro, not LAY-on-dro. Lo seinto, Akira, had a massive poster of your brother back home.  
_

Keith took in the download tentatively, with growing delight.  


He tried to offer near the end his own knowledge, stories about Lance in the war that weren’t a horror: mermaid planets and zero gravity tag, taking care of the entire team.  


But Veronica waved him off. 

The longest silence yet had grown while she stared at him over the rim of her third mimosa, eyebrows half raised. Finally, she said, “I’ve worked with Sam Holt for years, I know all about Voltron.”  


Keith stared at the sunlight reflecting off the massacre of syrup on her plate instead of those familiar blue eyes and wondered, not for the first time, why he was here.  


“Look, Kogane.” Veronica’s voice made him glance up. “You know Lance, so I don’t think it will surprise you if I say my baby brother is kind and friendly and loving. But that doesn’t mean he lets people know him very well. Someday instead of giving everything he’s got, someone is going to take care of him right back.”  


Keith swallowed. Thanked Galran genetics for champagne doing nothing for him and tried to speak evenly, “He deserves someone who will give him just as much.”  


“Yes,” She said, just as simply. Before downing her drink and turning a cheekier version of a McClain smile on him, trouble he recognized far off. “Now, tell me which one of those sexy Blade ladies who traveled with you guys is single.”  


It was also how Keith ended up in a group chat with her and Adam, the pertinent question being: _who designed blade suits??  
_

To which Adam had replied:_ and how do I get one for Takashi  
_

But it had also given him hope, more dangerous than the Abyss’s promised future. The bomb had landed, the gasoline spilled, he felt irradiated, burnt through with hoping.  


The bartender interrupted his retrospection by setting down an entire bottle of tequila and two shot glasses in front of him. Keith remembered much too late that Gurthan where quintessence sensitive telepaths.  


And he was _projecting_-  


Hastily, he twisted his hand in the gesture for _thank you, _as they also didn’t speak aloud. The gesture was mirrored and added to- a variant Keith didn’t know, bottom three fingered hands flicking outward while he brought his other two fists to his mouth. It looked like _congratulations, _or _bliss.  
_

His confusion must have been apparent, because the Gurthan winked at him again.  


Lance didn’t notice until he’d wrested out the stopper, the noise turning his head. Confetti caught in his curls from the ceremony, he’d unbuttoned his collar while Keith had been  daydreaming, revealing a slice of bare chest.  


Keith let himself look.  


Sunkissed, warmly brown to start with- he’d only learned today Lance had _freckles_. Keith wanted to find every single one with his mouth.

Steady- he was only shaking on the inside, as usual- he managed to pour two shots.  


And then, because Lance was making that face that said _can you handle this, _infuriating, and all Keith was thinking back was _I’ll take it all, just touch me, _Keith downed them both. 

He’d expected Lance to laugh, to fucking bump him again- those broad shoulders were made for _grabbing, _barely contained by cloth- but Keiths luck had never been good.  


One shot down, Lance _fucking chased_ the second one as he picked it up, like he expected Keith to _feed _him tequila. Grabbed for his hip as he leaned and_ missed_, sliding a hand under Keith’s suit jacket, fingertips pressing his stomach.  


Keith choked, eyes watering. 

A second too late, Lance breathed the predicted laugh, but he also didn’t move away. Danger close he hissed, “_Motherfucker_.”  


_Right on the edge_.  


They were almost there, it was only a question of who’d cross the line first.  


“Keeping it fair,” Keith tried to deadpan back, ruined entirely by how he was _grinning_. They both knew perfectly well Keith was only drinking because Lance was.  


The next he poured he pressed straight into Lance’s hand. The motion of him knocking it back was _absurdly_ erotic, unhelped by the way he licked his lips after swallowing. Lance opened his mouth, and Keith silently handed him a slice of lime before he could ask.  


_Thank you _was a long fingered hand squeezing Keith’s side before retreating.  


Around them, the music swelled again, shifting to an even older earth tune. _Faster_\- he followed Lance’s gaze to watch Conan spin Romelle, her hair flying wildly. Adam, sliding into a drop between Shiro’s legs before he tossed him back into the motion again.  


“I can’t believe we’re here,” Lance murmured, leaning one elbow on the bar.  


Keith knew what he meant, _but, “_Neither of them can either. Shiro called me at two in the morning, panicking about how lucky he is.” The words worked, softening the tilt of Lance’s mouth, “Which put him three hours before when Adam called me, crying.”

“_Oh my god_,” Lance snickered, “Why did you tell me that, I can’t laugh at the dancing now.”  


Across the room, both the younger Holts where shimmying together, completely out of sync with each other and the rhythm. Hunk was somewhere with _the rock he admired very much, _probably adding last minute decorations to the cake. Keith could just spy purple at the edge of the balcony over the ballroom where Krolia, Kolivan, and the invited Blades had gathered.  


Everyone he loved was in this room, strewn under a rainbow of flowers.  


Keith took a breath and shed his jacket. Rolled up the sleeves of his shirt that had been driving him crazy.  


“Do you want to dance?”  


Lance blinked at him, gaze dropping down Keith’s bared forearms like they were the most surprising thing, before returning to his face. “You want to dance with me?”  


Tugging loose his tie, Keith shrugged one shoulder._ Casual. _“I only know like half the steps, but”-

Stars and sky and god save him, Lance’s whole face transformed.  


_Don’t go too fast- don’t reach for too much- don’t-, _Keith, weak man that he was, grabbed both of Lance’s wrists and pulled, spilling them into the crowd.  


Lance laughed so hard he was half doubled over, tripping, until Keith let go to take both his hands properly and gasped, “Wait, _wait_, wait, Keith, did you mean you can _swing dance_?”  


Taking advantage of his superior height, Keith twirled him in lieu of reply, fast enough a crack of shocked laughter spilled from his mouth.  


“_What the fuck_,” Lance was, of course, a natural, falling into quick step however Keith pulled him. “Keith, you southern gentleman fuck, what is happening right now?”  


“_Dancing_,” Keith yelled over the swell of the music, Lance’s flushed cheeks an infinite victory. “Going to throw you, grab my hands when you slide down.”  


“Throw- _Keith!”  
_

The look on Lance’s face was almost as priceless at the weight of his hips against Keiths hands as he caught him, the downward motion about five times too slow as Lance gaped at him. “You  caught me.”  


It was automatic to scowl at the sheer accusation, but laughing won at the surprise. “I wasn’t going to _drop_ you”-  


“_Oh my god_, you’re _drawling_, I’ve unlocked southern Keith”-

“Don’t let go you shithead, or I _will_ drop you”-  


Lance crashed full body into him, both arms snaking around his neck. For the space of several endless heartbeats, Keith thought he’d done it on purpose. 

The sarcastic _yeehaw _he’d been about to spit died a quick death against the sensation of Lance’s heart beating so hard Keith could feel it, ribs pressed to ribs.  


He flexed helpless hands on Lance’s hips and thought finally, _finally-  
_

Lance jolted a second time, kept upright only by Keith until he gripped both his shoulders to straighten steadily, stepping to the side to reveal_ Pidge, _springing forward to tackle Lance all over again.  


It felt like a _sucker punch_.  


A step behind her, arm outstretch like he’d tried to stop her, Matt mouthed, _sorry.  
_

Keith was too busy wanting to melt into the ground to register what Pidge was yelling as she careened about, hanging from Lance’s arm. Matt stepped around them with an equally tense expression, wincing at Keith’s frozen body.  


Simultaneously clapping a hand down on Keith’s shoulder and leaning in to speak low enough it wouldn’t carry over the music, Matt double tapped a crystal tumbler against his knuckles, “Here, the good stuff from Antok.”  


Blindly, Keith drank, the taste burning the roof of his mouth and all the way down his throat registering a second later. He’d thought- he’d thought Lance was going to _kiss _him.  


“Why are you drinking Galra whiskey?”  


He wasn’t actually sure it was safe for humans to consume- but he was Keith Kogane, party of one, sole Galra-human hybrid standing- so he chugged.  


Lance glanced over, eyes flitting between the two of them, and frowned. _Fuck_.  


“I was headed your way before Katie made me dance,” Matt said, side-eyeing the gasp he made reaching the bottom of the glass. “Your mom opened the bottle with a_ sword,_ and told me to tell you good luck.”  


Matt responded to Keith’s scowled, silent reply with another shoulder clap, “You _were_ having a moment, Katie just didn’t notice because she’s on her fourth mojito. Lance looked like”-

Of course, Pidge chose that moment to grab her brother, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “_Mattttt_, Keith can dance.”  


Keith caught Matt’s bemused face over her head. Pidge only showed her age terrifically drunk, and it seemed like they were already there. “I know, Pidgie-pie.”  


“She’s_ trashed_,” Lance’s voice startled him, right against his ear. Taking the space Matt had left and filling it in a way that was incendiary to Keith’s self control, he wound an arm around Keith’s neck, chin propped on his shoulder. “Wants you to show her the toss. She’s absolutely going to puke on you if you try.”  


If he leaned back- if Keith turned his head-  


“We could show her?” Keith offered, tamping down on his breathing. “ Then we’ll find her some water.”  


Lance hummed in agreement, but didn’t move.  


Matt’s hand on that same shoulder was nothing in comparison- camaraderie, friendship that Keith loved surely- but Lance’s touch felt like a _brand_.  


“_Keeeith,_” Pidge bounced their direction again, if she found anything odd about Lance hanging off Keith like furniture or the shade of red he_ knew_ his face was turning, it didn’t show. “You can dance! You should have been in Voltron show, could _have_”-  


“Shiro and Adam took lessons,” Keith interrupted, wondering if Lance could feel how hard his heart was pounding. The Voltron show- long legs and _ribbons_, and Keith had only seen it with the Blades from a galaxy away. “I just helped.”  


Matt steadied her automatically as Pidge came to wobbling stop.  


“You,” She shouted, drawn out, before downing the rest of her drink and shoving the glass into Matt’s hand, “Have to show me.”  


Unthinkingly, Keith twisted to look at Lance and got a face full of his lip-bitten, trying not to laugh smirk. “…I”-  


“Too much height difference, Pidgey,” Lance cut in finally, horribly, stepping to Keith’s side, hands shoved in his pockets. “But we’ll show you how it’s done.”  


Before Keith could agree and _escape_ this moment, Pidge jabbed Lance in the chest. “_Nope_,” She yelled, last vestige of an inside voice abandoned. “Keith is all yours_ all the time, _it’s Holt hour now. Matt, you’re up.”  


“_Jesus fucking christ Katie_,” Matt groaned, but Keith was pretty sure at this point he was having an out of body experience from the Galra whiskey- _all yours all the time. “_You’re a drunk tyrant. Let’s just”-

Lance had frozen too, but whereas Keith couldn’t take his damned eyes off him, Lance was pointedly looking away. The ease of his standing there had bled away into something tense.  


Keith had the crystal clear thought that if he tried to say anything, he was going to _combust_.  


“_Matty_,” He interrupted, “It’s fine. C’mon.”  


With a palpable mortification that Keith didn’t recognize at all, Matt gently pushed Pidge’s unsteady form to lean on Lance and handed him her glass. 

“I am so, _so _sorry,” He muttered, letting Keith twist him at quarter speed through a spin, “Mom is going to kill her for getting this drunk, she switched to gin when I wasn’t looking.”  


“I can smell it,” Keith grunted, and tossed Matt into the air with ease. The catch was the problem- Matt flailed, Keith had to drop low to keep him from crashing into the floor, Lance and Pidge both rushed forward to try to stop the disaster in motion.  


Matt swore,filthy and _absolutely_ learned from the rebels.  


Keith untangled their arms and legs, but before he could stand Lance had grabbed his hand to pull him upright. “_Steady_, Samurai_._”  


Hope had burned the world to waterline, there was nothing left. It was a funny thing, how easily humiliation and adrenaline blended in his veins. “You’re a better partner,” Keith blurted.  


Lance’s eyes _sparked_.  


Matt choked a low laugh. “_Fucking- _sorry, Keith have you got her, can you?”  


It was a physical drag to look away, but Pidge was going down fast, flopped against Matt. “Yep,” Keith distantly heard himself say, mechanically tossing Pidge over one shoulder gently as possible.  


She giggled, nuzzling against scapula.  


When Keith looked up, Lance was still staring, mouth in the shape of a four letter word. 

“_Different_ partner,” He said, blue eyes bright, bright, _bright_, before he broke off eye contact with a little chuckle. “I’m definitely a better dancer.”  


The vivid blue carried over, the memory melting away without reason or feeling until Keith was staring at a different shade: the glaucous walls of Adam’s kitchen, painted by Shiro and Keith on a long past summer night.  


Abyss future memory, but it was real- it was life- he was-  


Listening to Shiro tell him about what the Olkari settlement in Earth’s rainforests were getting up to, the green belt of their planet expanding every year like a miracle. They’d just gotten home the day before, landing only a few hours before Keith and Lance arrived themselves.

The Olkari had asked for Adam specifically, Shiro was telling him, unbearable smug to be the plus one. He’d completed the picture by digging out the horrific_ trophy husband _mug Lance had given Shiro for a first wedding anniversary present. 

Keith had to help him locate where Adam had hid it- the action was rewarded by the look on Adam’s face when he came into the kitchen, an hour after Keith and Shiro went running, and swore a blue streak.  


As if summoned by the thought of him, a jaw cracking yawn announced Lance’s arrival before he stumbled from the doorway to plop down on top of Keith.  


Curls smashed flat brushed Keith’s face as he looped an arm around Lances knees, tucking him more securely onto his lap. “Hey baby.”  


Across the table, Shiro stuffed his flesh and blood fist into his mouth, squeak of a laugh escaping. Adam turned away from the batter he’d been whisking menacingly to fling out a hand, “There is another chair,_ right there._”  


Keith glared and ignored them both, pressing his coffee into Lance’s hand. He didn’t even open his eyes to take it, sipping with a happy hum. Somehow, despite more than a decade of life traveling back and forth between Earth and the entirety of the known cosmos, Lance still slept like a cat: everywhere, anywhere, with enormous zest when insomnia wasn’t battering his brain.  


“Morning,” Lance mumbled, stubble scraping Keith’s neck.   


Brushinglips over his brow in reply, Keith turned back to his brother, “Healing orchids?”  


“_Oh my god_,” Adam hissed.

“_Right_,” Shiro nodded, pink cheeked. “I’m going to send some with you guys for Coran. Altea is still your next stop, right?”_  
_

“Altea,” Keith agreed, rubbing a lazy hand over Lance’s flannel covered shin. “Then the Coalition, then back to Daibazaal for Hunk’s restaurant opening”-

Blue eyes cracked open. “Slash Romelle’s bachelorette party, don’t forget.” Lance shifted his face from shoved entirely into Keith and blinked, “Rad mug, Shiro.”  


Adam made another scathing noise, but Keith could see the back of his neck going red.  


“My brother-in-law has _fantastic_ taste,” Shiro, the_ god damned gigantic dork_, replied, toasting his coffee in their direction. “Do you think they make matching t-shirts?”  


“_Tank tops,_” Lance replied, fervent.  


The delight in his tiredly rough voice echoed through Keith, _through the life lived memory paradise, _and carried him on and on.  


Pink light, blue eyes, a thousand sunrises, happiness woven into every moment.   


In the light, Keith dreamt true dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Red and also more Red. We're back to Lance journeying across space to get his one true love armed with nothing but a tank top, too small cuffed jeans he really wouldn't have worn for this reunion, and the vicious urge to dropkick his sixteen year old self. Thats right, it's time for, The Valentine.


	6. Blood in your mouth, wish it was mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One emotionally overwhelmed boy makes it across the galaxy to his true love with the help of one gossipy lion tired of everyone's nonsense. It goes much better and worse than anticipated.

Red locked Lance in the cockpit.  
  
For the second time in what felt like only minutes but had to be longer, Lance found himself focusing on minutely changed details. He hadn’t noticed stumbling in to share Red’s impossible reality, but beyond the big things- _two pilots, two pilots, two, _his heart sang- even the colors were different. Reflecting back her newly sleek outsides: shades of red from the cherry heart of burning metal to accented burgundy depth. Gilded light of the sun on earth, gunmetal black floors that Red liked him noticing; she purred _zrayal _into his brain, Galran sibilant and beautifully alien.  
  
She was _laughing_ at him.  
  
Unused to the feeling, it spilled over into his psyche, champagne bubbles of giddiness popping in Lance’s veins, a grin that tipped straight into laughter on his face.  
  
The problem was once he started, he couldn’t _stop_.  
  
Laughing, gasping, pressing his face hard into his cupped hands to give him something to feel but his out of practice heart doing unsteady backflips beneath his ribs.  
  
Three years ago with a house full of family and friends who couldn’t look at him, Lance had decided remembering hurt too badly. If he thought about what could have been different- in the last 24 hours, in the last ten years, in that last golden summer- he was going to go insane.  
  
So Lance looked _forward- _he didn’t think about Red, the love she’d poured straight into his soul. About reckless grins and unknowable, incredible talent. Locked the door on violet eyes and tried to make himself forget starlight.  
  
Of course, that wall had eroded over the years. For one thing, Lance had always had a _spectacular _imagination- and for another, he couldn’t control his dreams.  
  
But other times, like drunken clockwork, like every time he didn’t call back a perfectly nice blond dinner date or contracted a fever that left him marooned in bed for too long without distraction, Lance thought about what would happen if they saw each other again.  
  
It was hard to imagine Keith even looking at him again, much less talking.  
  
Temper Lance could handle- but that night on beach Keith hadn’t been _angry. _The ghost haunting him was Keith’s hurt; that he’d destroyed something that couldn’t be mended. How couldn’t it be broken? Keith: suicidally brave, recklessly, utterly loyal and Lance: a coward, who’d shattered _something_ because he wanted it too much.  
_  
Something _made Red growl again, loud enough Lance’s temples rang with pain.  
  
Pink,_ pink _light. Pain so immense it was the cessation of conscious feeling, every bit of the memory exploded through his brain as Red’s behest. Gloved hands on his face, arms Lance trusted skirting injury to wrap around his shoulders.  
  
The only comfort through raw burn that rendered him insensate, only half human with pain: that it was Keith. He was going to die and Keith was looking at him.  
  
Lance spat words that would have made him mama want to wash out his mouth, even at his age, as the memory shattered back into reality. “_Red._”  
  
He’d needed to call Hunk and say the words _and die inside_ because he didn’t ever, ever say them. Not once, not even in the privacy of his own mind. But Lance’s denial was situational, he’d spent his life reaching for impossible things, he understood possibility.  
  
Lance had always half known, that was the problem.  
  
He was old enough to know he’d been stupid about Keith when they were kids. Since the moment he’d connected _Keith- cute and selective and utterly resistant to extraneous friendship-_ with cadet A. Kogane, top of the leaderboard, youngest fighter pilot in history, Lance had been half crazy.  
  
Rivalry.  
  
He’d wanted Keith to _see_ him. Lance, who was chasing the same dreams. Lance, whose brown face stood out just as much in military rank as Keith’s long black hair.  
  
Lance, who’d insisted _rivalry, _when he wanted friendship, when he wanted to know what the boy with the sad eyes and fearsome talent and the pretty hair looked like when he actually smiled- but rivalry, because rivalry meant_ equals._  
_  
Paladins_, Red rumbled. _Always my paladins_.

The future Lance had believed didn’t exist.  
  
Red, who was in their _souls, _minds and hearts. “How far back would I have to go to change it, Red?”  
  
When she answered, Lance didn’t understand. Despite the familiarity- despite working there now- it took him what felt like minutes to recognize the image of the inside of garrison locker, his that first year before he’d been a cargo pilot.  
  
A pink paper heart that had briefly made his teenaged heart stop. 

But it had been for _Taylor Michaels, _the broad shouldered, blond shithead whose locker was directly next to his.  
_  
Kitten_. Red insisted, flipping the image before his eyes again. _Look_. _Before the start, my paladins.  
_  
Lance slammed his open palm down on the floor, pattern biting into his palm. No, was his most distinct thought in the freshly rising hysteria. _No no no no no no_. He’d thrown it away- Lance had been a petty little shit, but not because- no, no, _no_.  
  
Keith, who did _everything_ first.  
  
Taylor. _Tailor_.  
  
He was such an asshole.  
  
Lance briefly lived out the horrific idea of apologizing for being a dick at fourteen, only for Keith to laugh in his face before Lance could even get to the even bigger, _begging_ apology for being an unmitigated disaster and a dick at twenty one.  
  
Through the strangled noise of frustration Lance was groaning, Red murmured, as though actually apologetic despite causing his emotional whiplash, _hold on kitten_.

Weightlessness- his heart pounding with a different, physical remembrance- white light like a supernova- and then calm, uninterrupted speed of Red in open space.  
  
Everything was wonderful, everything was a nightmare; just like Red, there was nothing in the world that felt like _that_.  
  
“You can_ wormhole_?” Lance pulled himself upright with the back of one pilots chair, ignoring the part of his brain that was sprinting through thoughts-_ Keith’s chair, look at the controls, Lance was right-handed but Keith was ambidextrous, there were still Bayard slots, still- _and stared out into the starry blackness of unfamiliar space.  
_  
Becoming_, Red purred all over again. _Became what paladins need._ _Not Altean limitations._

Assuming this really wasn’t an insane fever dream or the last scream of his dying brain from getting mauled by coyotes in the desert, Lance was going to have a long, long talk with Coran about Altean history. And fact-checking.  
  
Utterly smug, terribly proud, Red did again. Like ice from Blue, like fire from Red her in previous incarnation, she breathed out with a happy roar and what came was light. White light that cut through the universe, made a hole in the sky she flew through with ease.  
  
She was incredible.  
  
Wherever she’d taken them was_ bright, _the planet before them a surreal haze of gleaming purple light.  
  
Lance knew without explanation he’d run out of time to panic. Lightyears from home, hours from the tired, unhappy shape of his life was becoming, Red had taken Lance to Keith.  
  
Red met the thought._ Lost where only we can find. Paladin needs us, paladin._  
  
It was surreal beyond measure to watch her fly them down into the planet’s atmosphere. Like spun sugar, like an ocean of candy-colored fog, beautiful and wrong.  
  
She’d insisted _need_ and Lance had thought: _captured, crashed, lost, adrift._ She wouldn’t lie about Keith being in danger, he knew that, but his heart didn’t. What could Keith possibly need from Lance?  
  
She stopped in those ghostly, gleaming clouds, a silence around them so complete Lance could heart his own hammering heart.  
  
Like a fairytale, like a dream of this purple sky, Keith drifted slowly into view._ Dreaming,_ Red murmured, _dreamt._ At first, all Lance could think was that he didn’t look_ real. _Floating, not falling, his hair streaming around him, pale face peaceful.  
  
And then Lance was _panicking_, a spike of fear running all the way down to his core.  
  
Keith wasn’t _moving. _In upper atmosphere, without his mask, without-  
  
Red scooped him up gently, cutting off that infinitesimal fall with her closed mouth.  
  
Lance ran back the way he’d come, careening into walls until he slid down the sloping floor he’d entered on, to find Keith a crumbled heap of purple and black._ Breathe, _Red insisted, _Leandro_._ Listen._ She took away all sound from Lance’s brain, leaving only what she could hear: the low even thud of Keith’s pulse.  
  
Heart beating, Lance recited to himself, feeling for Keith’s pulse and failing- body armor in the way- lungs working- he was breathing evenly- no blood, no visibly abrasions, no sign of cold damage or violence from however he’d lost his ship.  
  
Keith was fine. Unconscious. _Fine.  
_  
He’d get him off the floor and it would be fine._  
_  
Lance realized instantly that trying to drag Keith’s lean bulk, complete with body armor, was the opposite of a good idea.  
  
It wasn’t violet eyes fluttering open that announced Keith’s return to consciousness. Instead, one moment he was dead weight in Lance’s arms, the next heartbeat slamming an elbow with ferocious accuracy into his face.  
  
All one lethal fast moment: Marmoran mask shuddered into existence, the sick crack from the bone on bone collision with Lance’s nose and Keith roiling with that terrifying grace out of his hold to face him, sword summoned to hand and the two-tone whistle that normally summoned Kosmo piercing the air.

Red was laughing in his head before he’d managed to steady himself, trickle of blood leaking over Lance’s lip. “_Jesus Christ_, Keith.”

Several feet away where he’d bodily thrown himself, purple tinged sword between them, Keith had frozen, only motion the rise and fall of his chest.  
  
Wearily, Lance kept eyes on him, cupping his readily apparent broken nose. Licked the blood from his teeth and groaned, pain pulsing in his face at the motion.  
_  
“Lance?_”  
  
He sounded- well Lance could admit, Keith always sounded good to him,_ gravelly_, that insane dark chocolate midnight voice he’d practically forgotten familiar again in an instant- like the word punched out of him.  
  
Lance dropped the hand from his face. “Required to call me Leandro if you’re going to keep breaking things.”  
  
The Marmoran mask vanished in a shattering of purple light and there was Keith, awake,_ alive,_ breathing the same air as Lance for the first time in three years.  
  
“_Lance_,” He said again, sword melting back into a knife that he hastily tucked away. 

Two long strides ate the space between them, until Keith was _right there_, ripping off one glove with his teeth. It was not hot- it was_ not- who the hell was Lance kidding- _

Both hands matter a factly freed, Keith pressed gentle, cool fingertips to Lance’s face.

“_Keith_”-  
  
He make a tiny shushing noise- god, cute,_ so cute, Lance was going to die right there, overwhelmed and bleeding-_ and tapped his thumb under Lance’s eye, checking his cheekbone for breaks.  
  
“Just my nose,” Lance managed to say, skin too tight, too hot, under Keith’s featherlight touch.  
  
Keith’s mouth twitched- the exact way he used to bite down on his lip, Lance had seen the motion a thousand times, seen him do it hard enough to draw blood- but rather than flash not quite human teeth, he nodded. “I need to set it.”  
  
Surely there was no medical reason for his other hand to be on Lance’s face too- surely it was not first aid to cup his jaw so _softly_ like- _like-_

A small hysteric noise escaped Lance’s mouth, “No man, I can do it, really. You don’t have to.”  
  
And Keith just looked at him.  
  
Helpless, Lance stared back. He was exactly the same- utterly beautiful from the fairytale prince fullness of his lips to the sharp line of his jaw, tired eyes bright and- _amused?  
_  
Keith raised his eyebrows. Just as suddenly as the wakeup, he huffed a rough laugh. “You’re so fucking stubborn.”  
  
The axis of the world shifted a little more toward rightness, Lance’s heart beating double-time.“_I’m_ stubborn?” He choked out, laughing back despite himself. “You’re the one free falling through space by _yourself, _without landing gear, in the middle of an unknown quadrant”-

“_Leandro_,” Keith cut him off. Lance absolutely _did not_, quiver deep down at the tone of his voice. “Let me fix your face.”  
  
“Fine,” Lance said, weakly. The glare was weak too, he knew it- ruined by the way he couldn’t stop grinning. How could he? Keith was_ alive and speaking to him. _Stroking a thumb over his  
cheek like he hadn’t even noticed he was doing it, sword callouses a rough pleasure. “Your fault. Do you always wake up like that?”  
  
He hadn’t really meant the question; Lance was pretty sure his mouth and brain were in complete disconnect at the moment_, thankfully, _but Keith grimaced.  
  
“No,” He admitted, voice strained, “Not always.”

Lance couldn’t stop _looking_ at him. 

“Do it,” He said.  
  
Keith’s eyebrows jumped again, impossible eyes moving over his face like he’d heard everything Lance was thinking and not saying, like he’d caught up to the reality that is was happening. Three years was a forever, was_ nothing_-  
  
Lance deserved the broken nose. 

It was actually,_ exactly _how he’d imagined this meeting when he thought of it, assuming Keith would agree to be in the same room with him at all. Something ridiculous was on the tip of his tongue-_ I thought you were dead when I saw you, I tried to forget your face, set my bones and break them again, it’s yours to do with whatever you want- Keith- _

Keith set his nose back into place with a crunch.  
  
Unwillingly, Lance’s whole body shuddered with surprise, the blink of pain lessening to a dull pound. 

It said something about the life Lance had lived since he was seventeen that he could already tell that he’d have not one, but two black eyes. The first, actually, that he’d even gotten from Keith; despite their long history of kicking the shit out of each other for fun- the very memory of sparring, hot, _hot_ under his skin.

Even furious, brawling too rough over stupid things, always right on the edge of_ held back_, it had been fun. Where the Garrison had taught him only to fall, from Keith Lance had learned to breathe and keep going.  
  
Keith, who was standing frozen, both hands cupped over the curve of Lance’s cheeks.  
  
God, he’d missed him.  
Had they _ever_ been just friends? He wasn’t stupid- he’d always been attracted to Keith, been infuriated by him, loved to argue to see how bright those haunting purple eyes became. Would have died without a thought during the war to keep him safe; _friendship_? The wrong thought and Lance knew it- had they ever _stopped_ being friends?  
  
“Keith,” Lance said again and paused- he had too many things to say, didn’t begin to know where to start. Apologies had a history of going wrong in his mouth- he’d been an idiot, a _coward_-  
  
Visibly, Keith seemed to realize what was he was doing. Dropped his arms, took a step back, one low, long breath rattling out of him.  
  
They were the same height all over again, Lance’s long legs having caught up to Keith’s lean bulk sometime over the years. It looked like he hadn’t cut his hair in all that time; shining black past Keith’s shoulders, the faintest purple sheen in Red’s ambient golden light.  
  
The fleeting thought of how_ soft _Lance knew it was- memory of braiding that hair when it smelled like saltwater _choked him, _made stronger by Red in his head.  
  
Swallowing the painful lump in his throat, Lance had just opened his mouth to try again when then entire ship shuddered around them, a midair twist that threw him bodily into Keith.  
  
Reacquainting his face with the feel of space-grade body armor was about as comfortable as the initial impact of Keith’s elbow- Lance flailed and kept falling- _did Red alter the gravity, seriously?_\- until Keith caught him, Lance’s face bounding one last painful time off the enforced shoulder of his Marmoran suit. 

Keith swore against his hair, but didn’t drop him.  
  
In fact, sure arms crossed tighter over his back, tucking Lance close without giving him room to raise his head. Like- god help him, Lance recognized the_ grip, _the motion igniting the months worth of slapdash Marmora spy training Acxa had given him last time she visited Vero- Keith was going to try to shield Lance’s entire body with his if they went flying again.  
  
“_Why_,” Infinitely familiar, Lance could tell Keith had gritted teeth, said with Lance would call undue anger, “Are you wearing a _tank top_?”

Dumbly, Lance spluttered, “I came straight from Arizona!”  
  
Better than what he was thinking: a looped nonsensical, _Keith noticed what I was wearing? Keith, noticed?  
_  
“And _who_,” Keith was yelling now, not in frustration, but over engine noise, volume rising as Red tried to imitate a falling star, “_The_ _hell_ is flying this thing?”

Like a magic word, before Lance could say a thing, Red opened her mouth.  
  
They went flying, sliding- of course there were handles for jumping _into _space, not to catch yourself- and then they were floating.  
  
Despite Keith’s iron grip insisting otherwise, it wasn’t even a fall. Purple mist high above them, Lance and Keith floated down through pink light, landing soft as an embrace in a lilac colored field.  
  
Which Lance got a very detailed view of when Keith finally dropped him, scrambling to stand. Dust flying, clinging to his boots, Keith staggered.  
Lance stayed down, hands in soil and flowers, to follow Keith’s gaze upward.  
  
Not unsteadiness_\- emotion._  
  
Above them Red hovered, head down like a panther scenting. Against the fairytale beauty of light and mist, shimmering lush color, her changes were even more apparent. Newly monolithic size, sleek and sharp, her shade darker here: burgundy and gold, not a trace of the Altean favor for sacred teal light or off-kilter curves.

“_Red_,” Keiths low beautiful voice rang through the unnatural stillness. In another Galra fast motion, he twisted to look at Lance for half a second, answering nod making those eyes gleam.  
  
Softer than sand, the dusty ground tried to hold Lance as he rose.  
  
Letting the sounds wash over him rather than really listen, Keith moved from resonant Galran to liquid soft Altean as Lance came shoulder to shoulder with him. If not for the fact that the adrenaline rush of this_ insane_ moment- this was_ happening, _brain catching up to his aching heart and racing with fear- Lance might have closed his eyes.  
  
Red’s purr rang through his bones as solace- and Keith was looking at him again, plush lips parted.  
_  
Paladins. My Paladin, your paladin.  
_  
Lance’s cheeks burned as her words echoed between them- her love, her joy, her _amusement_\- but he could hear Keith too. The faintest edge of a connection, the moment before you opened your eyes in an Altean mindmeld.  
  
Fear. _Longing_. Hope burning and bursting like sparks escaping to the open sky.  
  
Keith shook his head, cheekbones and scars in stark relief. “She came back.”  
  
Lance didn’t have words either. He choked a laugh and tried to feel instead; press in Keith’s direction what he wanted him to know, what he’d recognize. _Happiness, _the second of shock when love and fire poured incandescent back into his soul. 

It redoubled, rebounded from Keith: _came back, came back, came back_\- he didn’t need Red’s fire, could have burned the sky with the ferocity of what he was feeling.

Red’s roar shook the world.  
_  
Paladins_, she hummed, vibrating up Lance’s spine, smug beyond measure,_ find you at stories end, my silly stupid kittens. Together. _

And then she left them there.  
  
Pink light, purple clouds, flowers whose golden hearts pulsed and shone. An unfathomable, glorious desolation; no sign of sentient life but them. No sound Lance could hear but Red’s faint laughter, and Keith breathing beside him.  
  
Alone, together, for the first time in years. 

_  
_ ***  


Keith wasn’t a person, a _body_\- He’s memory, the truest things, he’s_ dream-_

_ He’s Yorak, grabbing at his mother’s long lavender legs with chubby toddler hands that are only sometimes the same color-_

_ He’s Akira James, name sweet as honey and long as the sunrise in his father’s deep Georgia voice-_

_ He’s Keith, moving forward every lonely step with spite, with anger, determined to keep going, to fly higher, to survive-_

_ He’s the Red Paladin, the Guardian Spirit of Flame, right hand and loyal heart-_

_ A Blade, the many and the silent who seek knowledge even in the darkest places-_

_ Black Paladin, brother-_

_ He’s Keith Akira James Kogane. His mother’s son, Kolivan’s heir. Raised in all the ways that matter by Shiro’s kindness and Adam’s wit. Loves the sun and stars like his father. Flies like he was born to it, fights full-hearted like the Galra of old that he is.  
  
He loves his family. Loves his friends.  
  
Loves a boy from Cuba with eyes like the sky on a long lost summer by the sea.  
He-_

Keith didn’t so much wake up as slam back into his own body- his head hurt, his throat hurt, his bones ached with old sadness and too much quintessence; Galra instincts trapped alone in a half human body, a _longing _for something he couldn’t have.  
  
And then awareness kicked in.  
  
Fighting was _automatic- _touching Lance as equally without thought- _what the hell was he doing, why was Lance letting him- _Keith was acting on pure impulse, still half certain he was drowning in the dreaming light.  
  
He didn’t remember this- in life or memory or the Abyss- but Keith recognized that _godforsaken tank top. _Pearly grey, it was even more obscenely lose on Lance’s body than it had been on Keith in the time fuckery false future, slipping low over the wings of his shoulder blades, dipping in front to show off sun-brown skin, a freckled collarbone Keith had convinced himself he’d forgotten.  
  
He _recognized_ Lance’s frozen in maturity twenty four year-old face.  
  
Knew how fucking soft the shaved back and sides of that dramatic undercut spilling curls felt.  
  
It was easy to roll with the gut punch of it all- not to give into the urge to scream into his hands- Keith no longer knew how long he’d been on Kral’ax’zyan. Quintessence might as well have been leaking out of his pores with yearning, an exhausted hunger.  
  
He was probably dying.  
  
They’d find him eventually. Keith knew damn well he wouldn’t _actually_ die here- so what was the harm?_ Everything_ hurt. Of course Lance with his startled smile and worn thin jeans and intriguingly tattooed skin _wasn’_t real.  
  
Until he was.  
  
Until a warmth that hummed through Keiths bones and ignited his blood roared to life: no Lion would be denied her Paladin, no dream or memory or magic could come close to Red.  
  
It was falling into the sun- Red _loved_ him, hadn’t wanted to leave, had come back to them. _Akira_, she purred, just for him, _raging-star-kitten, you’re always mine. Always his. Always a Paladin. My Paladins. We came for you.  
_  
Swallowing broken glass- Lance hadn’t spoken to him in three Earth years.  
  
Hadn’t left the planet even, in all that time, the stubborn_ shithead_. Keith wasn’t bitter exactly- Lance staying on Earth kept him away from the larger audience of the growing Paladin legends. Shielded him and Keith’s tattered dignity from the Red Paladins merch line, the Altean songs about them, the clan-royal Galra who whispered_ tyzinra _in Keiths wake: an honorable widower, because the death of a love might as well have been death itself to a species who mated for life. No matter that it had never_ started_.  
  
A rare gift of his mixed heritage: Keith radiated quintessence like a tuning fork.  
_  
Everyone_ knew.  
  
Elated, terrified, a fucked wildfire of hope and anger from Lance’s soft skin under his fingertips- Keith decided he’d rather go back to losing time in the mists of this world than explain himself. _  
_  
What had even changed? Lance was still _Lance. _

Keith’s stubborn, caring, selfless, charming,_ beautiful_ friend. Who made him laugh, who always had his back and never, ever missed a shot. They were the Red Paladins, bound in flame and spirit. They still had _Red- _they were fundamentally the same people who’d fought across galaxies together.  
  
All that was different was now Keith knew they weren’t on the same page with where that led.  
  
Which was_ fine_.  
  
Separate from the warmth she radiated between them- it felt so good, how had Keith lived without the_ connection_\- Red growled to him. 

_ No time for stupid, little one. Became. Old is new is the same. Leandro is afraid.  
_  
Galra- resistant to universal translators, trusty Old High Galran- reverb ripped from his aching throat. “_Red”-_

She cut him off, heat in his blood cranking up with affection and temper. _No. Mine, not meant to be alone. No shame, no fear, have each other, Paladins.  
  
“_And I’m glad_,” _Keith sighed_, “_But I’m not_ being stupid, you know I”-_

_ STUPID. _She insisted, a nightmare that he’d missed so, so damned much. _Leandro came for Akira. Your paladin came. _

He was thrown into a sense memory as only a Lion could echo with painful reality: Lance’s voice, strained, utterly deprecating- _Red, Keith does not want to see me_\- Lance on the floor of her cockpit, small and awed- _we can fly together?  
_  
It wasn’t Red making Keith’s heart pound._  
  
Stupid,_ she purred, smug fondness infinite. _Scared. Let Leandro sky-bright kitten see.  
_  
And then she left them there. Stranded Keith with the boy- _man,_ god, they’d grown up together and Keith still wasn’t done soaking in the breath of Lance’s shoulders, the smooth line of his throat that called like a damned siren song- who he’d spent years trying not to miss.

Keith had known all along it was his own fault.  
  
But Red- she was hope, his napalm heart, and she_ didn’t _lie.  
  
Forcefully- he was so tired, too awake, quintessence in the air rattling his lungs- Keith turned to Lance. 

_Roll with the punches, Kogane_. 

That smile? Real. Uncertain tilted chin and tattooed arms smeared in glittering dust? Real. That broken nose? Also real.  
  
The shoulder brushing his, like no time and failure and heartbreak had ever passed, warm even through his Marmoran suit?_ Real_.  
  
Fuck explanations. Keith left Lance on that beach in Cuba, and Lance had never said a single word. He wasn’t going to start apologizing now, much less tiptoe around the long burnt wreckage. Keith wasn’t going to try to explain himself, wasn’t going to bother pretending he wasn’t happy to see him. 

It had been going fine when it wasn’t real- he’d be fine now.

Impulse had gotten him this far.  
  
And it was_ Lance.  
_  
Who was dragging the ratty heel of one foot through the dusty ground, smile a little tighter with every heartbeat of the silence. Keith was reasonably sure he’d had those Converse since they were _teenagers- _and was struck all over again by what Lance was wearing.  
  
The faded, cuffed jeans. That_ fucking tank top_. Relaxed and utterly, devastatingly human.  
  
He had to be _freezing_.  
  
“Did she kidnap you?” Keith blurted, taking in with growing horror the torn canvas of Lance’s other shoe.  
  
“_What_”- Lance spluttered, “_Why _would she need to kidnap me”-  
_  
Because you love Earth as much as love her. Because Shiro told me you won’t even go into orbit for cross-galaxy transmissions. That you won’t fly- won’t pilot-_

_Roll with the punches, Kogane._  
  
“You’re cold,” Keith interrupted. By some miracle, the emergency landing pack was still strapped to his back; wordless, he passed Lance the tiny square that would unfold itself into back-up cold weather gear. The jacket wouldn’t help the fact that Lance wouldn’t be able to breathe, would freeze if they ended up in space, but it was something.  
  
After failing to fully brush away the purple dust that glittered over his arms, Lance shrugged it on without objection, the kevlar warmth subtly emblazoned with Keith’s personal sigil at the neck and wrists.  
  
He tugged at that faintly red on black collar, must have felt the familiar ping of intuitive fabric. “Bullet-proof?”  
  
Keith shook his head, eyes pulled magnetically to those long fingers. It meant less than nothing- _a team_, they’d always been a team, even when Lance hated him. So what, if the jacket fit? “Low level ballistics only, won’t hold under laser fire.”  
  
He took the dagger Keith pulled from the small of his back with less enthusiasm, luxite absurdly bright in this gold and purple-pink world. “ I”- the word had barely left Lance’s mouth before the blade flashed, lengthening into a sword in his hand.  
  
Keith bit the inside of his cheek_. Roll. With. It. Kogane_.

Wide blue eyes blinked at him. “I though only Galra?”  
  
“S’not a bloodline blade,” Keith said, reaching out to tap Lance’s shoulder and summon to life the extra scabbard that came with the gear jacket. “I got new swords after the war, they’ll work for you.”_  
_  
Lance sheathed the sword in one long, sure motion, more than enough to tell Keith he hadn’t been idle these long years.  
  
Pulled tight the borrowed jacket shoulders and ran a hand through his hair, looking at Keith all the while with that weary, worn bright happiness. “Alright Red, where are we?”  
  
It was impossible, it was_ real_. Keith rolled his tired shoulders and let himself look back at the only blue in this whole dreamt world Allura had given the galaxy. “ Have you ever heard the stories of the Nexus?”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance: KEITH MUST HATE ME. HAS KEITH ALWAYS HATED ME?
> 
> Keith, on complete autopilot: Are you hurt? I'll fix it. Cold? In danger? Leandro. You stubborn beautiful fucker, let me take care of you


	7. a boy who loved the sun so much he defied the stars to save it and give it back to the galaxy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude: Lotor

Lotor did not give a single, infinitesimal fuck about the paladins of Voltron.  


He was time, he was space. Lotor breathed in stars and Allure breathed back against his lips the _universe. _There was everything to see, every system to mend. Without mortal bodies they were quintessence, in death, they were life.  


Together.  
  
It took time to heal broken things. Not just to reset: Daibazaal and Altea brought forward to life on the day they would have perished. The Galran imperial army, poisoned by void spirits needed more aid then their kinsman could give.  
  
Planets that had burned.  
  
Stars eaten.  
  
So what, if he ensured that his Generals would never know sickness or weakness?   
  
There was more quintessence in the universe than there had ever been before. Why not give his long suffering people-_ both his peoples_\- stories and tradition and hope?  
  
They could do with it what they would. It was Lotors job to give them that choice, that bolstering, beyond that he didn’t care.  
  
But what he did care about was this: that they didn’t make the same mistakes. The Alteans needed their alchemy, the Galra needed their hero's.  
  
Their princes, who wouldn’t lead them to ruin.  
  
With every timeline beneath their fingertips- Lotor catalogued, Allura revived, goddess that she was- they’d seen it all. Worlds burned all over again. New civilizations. The Lions exploding and taking the universe with them.  
_  
Love_, Lotor was pleased to learn, as the Galra of old had taught, was the constant.  
  
Pivotal, people found each other across cosmos and against all probability, again and again, turning their timelines to rights with it. The same people, the same souls, again and again and again.  
  
Lotor made a study of it, while Allura was busy with Puig. _Lion goddess,_ she’d laughed, _I really am one now.   
  
You always were,_ he’d replied, sliding hands through her silver hair. Lotor had been tempted to ask her to remain with him, in their garden of starlight- but then again, they had forever. Who was he to gainsay his wife some fun?  
  
Allura’s favorite timeline was a particularly dreamy one: war-free at the start of their lives, but still scattered with her beloved Paladins. Shirogane, the most tolerable of the lot, a space-faring admiral. A _friend_. His crew was much the same intolerable faces, the yellow one, the loud one, the demonic clever one.  
  
Like magnets in all their lives, they were drawn to Altea, to find the missing piece.  
  
Kogane- and hadn’t Lotor laughed to see his half-Gala face become Prime of Daibazaal in the anchored line, _High Prince of Clan Marmora - _in this life a pure Galran assassin, tempted from his mission and mark by the charm of _the loud one, _under Altea’s blooming skies.  
  
Ridiculously, those two were also a constant.  
  
Lotor couldn’t imagine it- Kogane was the _Crimson Flame, _Galra lined up to court him in any timeline.  
  
But Allura insisted they were ideal bondmates- infatuated since childhood, temperance and passion.  
  
Lotor was less pleased to look back upon the anchored line and find them _separate_. The only life where either of them had lived to this age and done so. For a Prime to be _tyzinra _was a tragedy, for these two morons to not follow their hearts threw off everything he and Allura had tracked about the multiverse.  
  
So perhaps it was a mad little push.  
  
But Allura was busy, and Lotor knew how pleased she would be if he could sort this before she returned. A gift: her mad paladins happy, balance restored.  
  
Kral’ax’zyan always was a favorite tale.  
  
Galra needed their heros, princes needed their love, and Lotor wanted to make his wife smile. 


	8. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein we learn why Matt Holt half-heartedly hates Lance, and get a thorough reminder that Keith does not agree.

Three years before Keith had to face the reality that he was trapped in a fairytale with Lance after equally many silent years, he’d been a quintessence bleeding storm cloud on Matt Holt’s doorstep.  
  
It was a bad sign that Matt had beat him to Altea, but a blessing that he was home- this time a glass-magic-stone tower he was living in while overseeing an engineering project for the royal Altean alchemy guild- to catch Keith when he collapsed through the door.  
  
“_Dude_,” Matt groaned, before dropping him onto the quintessence warm floor. Keith managed to grumble in response.  
  
The floor tile felt incredible, which Keith was aware enough to know was _not_ a normal reaction. “M’sorry.”  
  
Half a huffed laugh, Matt slid down to the floor flooded in pink-tinged Altean sunlight with him. “Buddy,” Matt drew out the word, a silent _you don’t need to apologize_ that Keith recognized,   
“I’ve got you. Compiled the greatest hits of the last hundred years of American action movies, Adam gave me an entire chocolate cake, and Romelle just dropped off a case of that weird juniberry wine that tastes like tequila.”  
  
At the half interested, grateful noise Keith made, Matt reached for his arm.   
  
Too fast- what should have been a casual gesture made a thousand times between them- and _anger pain rage_ twisted lightening fast through Keith like they were a separate entity. Half an instinctual teeth-bared snarl ripped from his throat before Keith threw himself back in horror, groaning as he collided with the doorframe.  
  
“I’m sorry, _fuck. Matt_, I’m sorry”-  
  
It took a few seconds for his vision to shift back to normal from too-sharp too-bright haze that felt horrifically predatory, to see his best friend eyeing him thoughtfully. “Do you know your whole face just went extra Galra?”  
  
Keith buried the offending features in his hands. “Something’s _wrong_.”  
  
“I’m reaching out,” Matt said, way too cheerful for what Keith was feeling, “Don’t bite me, okay? Only into that much teeth _way_ more naked, and you are not at the top of my list right now,”   
  
Cool hands pulled Keith’s palms from his face, listening to Matt talk helping just like it always had.  
  
Matt stared at him for a long minute- Keith didn’t particularly want to think about what he was seeing, five days across Keith’s too-too-Gala fucked up face that said _loss_ and _exhaustion_\- before poking one cheek.  
  
Keith swapped his hand automatically. “When you say it like that, implies I was top of the list at one point.”  
  
“How quickly you forget the darkest week after your sixteenth birthday,” Matt replied, jabbing again. “We both know you’re a hot, hot space commodity, ‘kira.”  
  
Too tired to bother batting away the curious poking, Keith let his head thunk back again. “_So hot,” _He’d meant to joke, but it came out horrifically bitter even to his own ears. _God damn it_. Matt carefully turned his face into the light. “Am I turning purple or something?”  
  
“Has that happened before?”  
  
“When I was a baby?”  
  
“_Seriously_?” The noise Matt made had Keith opening one eye. “_Sorry_, just- how do Galra genetics even work? Co-dominance with human traits is”-  
  
The look Keith gave him pulled Matt back to the matter at hand. “_Right_\- let’s get you inside, man. Welcome to my wizard tower palace.”  
  
On the second try Keith had actually managed to stand and follow Matt in, the quintessence sensitive threshold shutting the door smoothly behind him. Pink sunshine and stone, the beautiful house was slowly being taken over by Matt’s research materials; arcane machinery and books scattered everywhere.  
  
In the true spirit of friendship- Keith was grateful every damn day Matt was alive, he didn’t say it enough- Matt silently followed when Keith laid down on his living room floor. The last time they’d done this, Keith had just hooked up with- after punching in the face for the _second time_\- James Griffin.   
  
It seemed like a lifetime ago- a stupider, younger, easier life, so much worse and so very far away.   
  
Matt rolled on his side. “Do you want to talk about why you look like you just refought the battle of Olkarion by yourself, or breakup stuff first?”  
  
From beneath his own arm, Keith muttered, “Not a breakup.”  
_  
“Keith.”_  
  
“We never even,” Keith choked on the word _kissed_, brain overfull of smooth tan skin and eyes that thought they hid the sadness, of the last time he’d slept, drifting off to the sound of Lance breathing in time with the ocean’s waves, _“I never told him”-  
_   
Keith cut himself off, twisting with a choked noise of protesting, too-tense muscles, to face concerned brown eyes that he knew wouldn’t judge him. “I haven’t slept since I left.”  
  
“For five days? Keith._” _Matt’s wide eyed gaze swam before him, jaw clenching and unclenching, clearly remembering the self destructive shit Keith had been busy forcing his body through midway of war: remembering forty hour Blade missions, suicide runs that ended in flames.   
  
They’d_ talked_ about this.  
T  
iredly, Keith struggled to correct him. “ No, _Matty_\- I can’t sleep.” The words tumbled out, Galran reverb deep in his throat sneaking into the English. “Something’s wrong with _me_. I’m not- do you remember when you flew Blue? Adrenaline and”-

“_Quintessence_,” Matt sighed, face scrunching. “Fuck, I had a theory about this.”  
  
Carefully, his own body feeling more like a weapon than years of fighting had taught him, Keith slowly, gently, slung an arm around his best friend. Matt caught him in a significantly less soft hug, muttering about flying without sleep.   
  
The last time they’d ended up cuddling, Matt had just kissed- finally, _giddily- _Jennifer Joyce, only for her to make him promise he wouldn’t tell anyone she’d kissed him back. Matt cried, Keith threatening to poison her barely within regulation pet parrot- they were good at knowing how to help each other.  
  
Keith pressed his doubtless disgusting, sweaty forehead into Matt’s shoulder and tried not to think about the incontrovertible fact that Lance was the last person he’d touched. Shrugged off both Hunk’s stricken sympathy and Shiro and Adam’s overwhelming understanding, and run.   
  
They whole damned impossible universe was his for the taking; to see, to _help_, and he wasn’t going to be sharing it.   
  
Matt swore a low Altean curse and blew Keith’s hair out of his face. After an interim of silence, he said, finally. “Don’t lie, it hurts right?”  
  
Keith opened his mouth and stopped- _Lance didn’t want him._ The Abyss was_ wrong_\- he’d believed it, no matter how many times he’d insisted otherwise, a part of him had believed in that bright future. Agony yes; humiliation, wholly and completely.  
  
Matt must have felt him go rigid. “_Buddy, _fuck, I know. But physical pain? It hurts right now?”  
  
Keith mumbled a _yes_. Something was _wrong_ with him- not just his entire romantic life crashing and burning on a cataclysmic level in front of almost everyone he knew and loved.   
_Galran_, lightening stuck with adrenaline, like a Lion that no longer existed was trying to rip through his spine to re-bond with his soul.  
  
With that wordless agreement that sounded more like a groan, Matt left a smacking kiss on Keith’s forehead before staggering to his feet. Keener than normal hearing told Keith what he was doing despite his shut eyes: the slam of kitchen cabinets, gathering of paper, a small thump as Matt tripped and bumped into the side of what had to be a couch he’d brought from Earth.  
  
Cracking his eyes open, Keith was graced with the sight of an enormous glass of water set by his face, and Matt tossing down his overflowing Voltron Theories notebook.   
  
“Okay, so,” In lieu of the spikey halo that had populated moments of concentration in their teen years, Matt was pushing his hair out of his eyes repeatedly. “Remember right after we got back to Earth, when we stole all our medical records from the Garrison?”  
  
Keith, healing fast even with dodgy earth medical care thanks to his Galra blood, escaping the ward the night before he was to be cleared to help Matt. It hadn’t been a hard sell- Keith barely trusted the Garrison on a good day.  
  
Matt copied everything, Keith let loose a particularly insidious Marmoran virus- years of red flags and the results of all the extra medical testing they’d endured coming home erased.  
  
“Quintessence exposure altered us on a cellular level,” Keith recited hollowly, “Like radiation, everyone who went into the rift.”  
  
Shaking his head, Matt scooted the neglected water closer until it hit Keith’s chin. “It should have killed you, according to the Alteans.”  
  
They’d glowed, Keith remembered. Like stars. Like dying, burning worlds.   
  
On an aching arm, Keith hauled himself upright to lean on the couch. They _should_ have died- but Allura had saved them. And_ vanished_. “You think the Lions did something?”  
  
Matt stopped pulling on his hair and started twitching, leg bouncing violently. “I can’t prove it yet.”  
  
That didn’t mean anything, and they both knew it. Keith had been proving Matt’s hunches since they were kids.   
  
Quick enough to make the torn apart Galra parts inside him sharpen the world again, Keith grabbed Matt’s vibrating calf.   
  
Matt met his eyes- slit pupils and radiant gold, Keith knew, lamplight eyes that weren’t the greatest thing in the world to look at- and sighed. “Don’t tell Katie.”  
  
The Voltron Theories notebook was condensed, but still enormous. After Shiro’s wedding- before Cuba,_ before, _Keith had to swallow down the thought- it had been on walls. Hunk had called them _conspiracy theorists, _but brought both snacks and Shae to relay galactic folklore. Pidge had been so disgusted that Matt still liked to use realpaper that she’d stayed away.   
  
Sam had wanted to give them a grant to do _actual_ research; but like Keith, Matt had no plans to stay on Earth or love of the Garrison left after what’d they’d seen.  
  
“_So_,” Matt pulled out a folder tucked in the back, spilled paper files and an Altean tablet onto the floor between them, “I tested myself for Quintessence anomalies too. Levels were too high to make sense, so I tested another human for a baseline. Adam. And when I still wasn’t getting corresponding data I brought in ‘Melle and Coran.”  
  
The shape of something was blooming in Keith’s mind, just enough details, before Matt passed him results. It took a second for Altean to resolve in his eyes, the reminder of Red and Black an insistent pain.  
  
“They’re the same,” Keith said, cautious. “How is that possible?”  
  
Matt was nodding. “It shouldn’t be. Do you know none of the first gen of Paladins died of natural causes?”   
  
Because a void spirit in the body of their commander_ slaughtered_ them, but Keith could recognize the freight train that was Matt understanding data. He nodded, and finally picked up the water.  
  
“Zarkon, right._ But_\- Keith, the first Green paladin was an Aneitha, they have even shorter lifespans than_ humans_.”  
  
Keith liked to think that with five days of sleep it wouldn’t have taken him so long a lull to catch up, but his whole haywire body _hurt, _enough that thinking wasn’t an easy task. “Green kept her Paladin alive?”  
  
“Flying a lion changes your body,” Matt said, hands clenched in his lap, “I flew Blue what, twice? And my Quintessence levels are the same as yours. And Coran, and Romelle, who by all rights should have been poisoned just by proximity in the abyss settlement and- I don’t know enough about alchemy _or _biology”-_  
_   
“_Matty_,” Keith interrupted his rising voice, “It’s okay, tell me what you think is happening.”  
  
With a long low breath, Matt visibly unwound.   
  
“Flying a Lion, even without forming Voltron, introduces you to the shared mind quintessence state.”  
  
“We’d sync up,” Keith agreed softly, “Sometimes we’d accidentally have each others dreams after battle.”  
  
Hunks anxiety, Shiro’s nightmares of migraine inducing magenta corridors, Pidge’s lurid imagination. Keith wasn’t sure if he’d only avoided Lance’s head from mutual insomnia, but he was grateful.   
  
More grateful now, that none of them had dreamt his dreams with him.   
  
“_Drift compatible_,” Matt joked, before looking down at his notes. “I think anyone who flew a Lion has _something- _it might be years before we can tell what it’s doing, if we’re even aging.”  
Keith had a few years now to realize Galra lived a lot,_ lot_ longer than human beings. That even if divided down the middle by his biology and getting half his mothers life span, Keith was still going to look the way he did now his friends whole lives, outlive them by years and years.  
  
Outlive_ Lance,_ but Keith had been okay with any version of that exchange. _Happy decades_, he’d thought in the Abyss. Insane dreams, now.  
  
Decades would have counted for everything.  
  
“Adam?” Keith asked. _Decades_\- Shiro and Adam had just finally gotten married, they needed to know.  
  
Matt was waving his hand before the second syllable was out of Keith’s mouth. “Just like me, like all of us. Which is where we get into fucking alchemy and me guessing.”  
_  
Fucking alchemy_, had Keith fighting down a weak smile. Quintessence they all understood at least a little; Matt for voracious research, Keith from instinct and the Abyss, the paladins from their Lions. But alchemy didn’t seem to play by any rules they could understand.   
  
Matt caught enough of it to grin back, rolling his eyes. “I could be wrong about why, okay? And don’t punch me for mentioning this, but you know how Galra mate for life?”  
  
Krolia, apologetic in the light of a fading memory, the Abyss all around them, had apologized to Keith. They’d been there a year already; Keith had come to know his mother, to actually see some of himself in her, but it had been surprise. The halting admission that Keith was _gift,_ a surprise- but his human father hadn’t been her bondmate, no matter that she’d loved him, would always love the elder Akira Kogane in her own way.  
  
Galra manipulated Quintessence on a far more _personal_ level than other species.   
  
Keith groaned.   
  
Too close to overwhelmed to think about every piece: not outliving everyone he loved, that they were still carrying around the infinite drift inside them. Half the thought- Lance was going to_ hate_ that- wandering in with a twist of pain before he made himself focus.  
  
Matt waited, half vibrating out of his skin, for Keith to weigh in.   
  
“Shiro’s clone body is Galra enough to share,” Keith waved his hand, unwilling to think too hard about his brother and his, well, Adam, _sharing. “But I’m not bonded, _Matt. They can’t form from one side.”  
  
“_Buddy_, if you think your breakup was one-sided, you’re full of shit.”  
  
Keith groaned again, close enough to despair the only other option left was to laugh. “That doesn’t _matter_, they can’t happen by accident either. I’m going to explore the universe alone and Lance is probably going to marry some gorgeous Altean with _fucking candy pink hair._”  
  
Matt waded into the paper pile between them to wrestle Keith into a hug. After spitting his own sweaty hair out, Keith let himself relax into being squished, Matt’s pointy chin jabbing the top of his head.  
  
“They are _really_ fucking into pink, aren’t they?” Matt muttered, and Keith laughed for real, noise barely emerging from where his face was smashed against Matt’s collarbone. “And_ teal_.”  
  
“Eighties never die, Matt.”  
  
“Jesus christ, tell that to your red boots Shiro spaced.”  
  
“Do the Altean’s know how ironic is is they gave you Merlin’s long lost pink house?”  
  
Somewhere above Keith’s head, twisting to grab another file, Matt huffed a laugh. “It’s like, I get that a pink sun is cool. But if it’s all you’ve_ known_? I don’t want an all yellow wardrobe to match_ home_.”  
  
Distraction was boon, even if his whole body ached. “And you’d look like a troll.”  
  
Matt unwound his other arm specifically to elbow him, already leaning away to dodge Keith’s inevitable growl.  
  
With clear panel pulled from somewhere in his hand, he scooted back while Keith was still blinking away the crystalline predators sight and let out a low whistle. “‘Kira, you’re lit up like a supernova.”  
  
The knowledge that they_ really _did have to talk about this, not just for Keith’s sake, was a weight around his shoulders. He tried to re-focus. “So everyone Voltron involved, plus Adam, has crazy life energy levels?”  
  
The medi-glass in his hand lighting up a vivid blue, Matt set it down hastily. “Right. For all of us, it’s something the Lions did. Or just being near them. Or…Well, it’s Allura.”  
  
Allura, who’d become a goddess. Allura whose face sometimes hung over far-flung planets she’d enjoyed in stars, only to disappear the next day.   
  
Allura, who’d yielded herself to the universe to save them all, and given up mortal life itself in the reckoning.  
  
“She’d do it,” Keith said, swallowing. “We weren’t linked when she._ Passed over_-but she’d do anything to make sure everyone was safe.”  
  
It was impossible to know how much she’d saved- their lives, lives beyond counting on a million, billion planets. How many timelines still existed. Honervra had been stopped before she could consume an infinity, how many still remained?

That Allura might meddle, to make sure they were a little safer, had a little more time in that endless expanse of stars, wasn’t a surprise.  
  
Lotor definitely would.  
  
“We need to think of an excuse to test Acxa.”  
  
Matt turned a page to show him a list of names,_ Acxa???_ at the bottom. “And we need to find out if you can balance your own quintessence or not.” At Keith’s expression, he went on, pulling on the hair that fell in his face as he talked. “So we’re all supercharged, right? And you and- well, _you know- were also pilots of the same lion.”  
_  
The wound of Red’s absence was deep and scarred over, but Keith still winced. “So was Shiro?”  
  
“Right,” Matt agreed, “But back to the first gen, before everything went to shit: when the Altean’s realized the lions didn’t care about the species of their pilots, they started trying to figure out who could take what places. Train potential pilots so they could step in. _But_”-

“But the Lions are sentient,” Keith concluded for him. “And they won’t bond on command."  
  
“And the whole program failed, because not even the_ Alchemist on High_ could sense a potential bond, once the Lion was locked on it’s current pilot.”  
  
Keith blinked at Matt’s expectant face.  
  
Had a brief fantasy that the bullshit of the last five days- no, week, might as well erase Shiro hearing Keith call Marisol_ mama_ at her request and _losing his mind with congratulations for nothing- _was a dream. 

He was going to wake up and nothing was going to hurt. Lance would there dumping_ horrific _amounts of cinnamon in his coffee, waiting for Keith so they could sneak away in the predawn light to spar without scaring anyone, violence and affection that would_ sing in his blood, _even when they inevitably went tumbling into the cold sand.   
  
“Lance and I,” He could say his name, he wasn’t_ crazy, _Keith started slowly, “Shouldn’t have been able to both pilot Red?”  
  
Matt’s face was screaming sympathy. “Not at the same time. Shiro couldn’t reach Black ever again, right?”  
  
Keith nodded, body lead in the pink sunlight.  
  
“So I think,” Matt continued, enormous brown eyes so clearly_ worried_ about him, “All the alchemy bullshit goes together. Red left a bridge? _Something._ And then you guys had an enormous amount of- _I’m so sorry_\- contact?”  
  
Keith didn’t fight the urge to bury his face in his hands. It hid the too-sharp, gritted teeth anyway. “I did not_ sleep with him,_ Matt.”  
  
Matt made a wounded noise. “_Buddy_, I know. You were together, though. With a crazy impossible door open between you and throwing enough quintessence around you could be a walking deep space engine.”  
  
Scrubbing the heels of him palms over his aching eyes- because he was_ angry_ and everything was terrible, not for_ anything_ else- Keith made himself breathe. Think.   
He could finish the theory easily, as in step with Matt as he’d been his whole adult life. “And I’m Galra in all the ways that count. Attuned to the quintessence around me. So my body thinks- is reacting- like a broken bond, or at least the start of one.”  
  
Fuck.  
  
Fuck Lance and his blue eyes and battle steady hands and ability to be such a contrary force in Keith’s life that he changed the course of an entire future.   
  
Fuck Zarkon’s dead frozen nothing for starting a war that meant Keith was Galra-_ Galra, Galra, Galra_. Strong and ageless, angry and scared. One of a kind, forever-and still didn’t have a real goddamn clue what that meant for him. _  
_   
Keith had always known exactly who he was. Nothing else had mattered.  
  
But he was so fucking tired of his own body betraying him.   
  
Best friend to beat all best friends, Matt silently followed when Keith laid back down on the floor, paper crunching beneath the armored panels of his Marmoran suit. They laid there while Keith _absolutely did not cry _and Matt_ obviously did not _start angry sniffling in sympathy, muttering about_ stupid stubborn asshole McClains._

Eventually they’d get up, and eat the cake Adam had baked with extra rage in the buttercream- two and half pieces for Matt, five and a half for Keith and his temporarily Galra on steroids metabolism. They had two weeks to make sense of the world war had left them with, and a _lot_ of Altean liquor to help.  
  
Shiro would call. Matt would decide they needed to light something on fire _right away, _and Keith would explain to very concerned Altean neighbors that an impromtu- _real burning carbon based material fire- _bonfire was a solemn tradition among their people, which would unfortunately spread as a galactic trend for welcoming earthlings to new places.   
  
Adam would call with Shiro the next time and threaten to ruin Lance’s entire career if Keith wanted.   
  
Romelle would come over, sadder than she should have been, and admit she didn’t know how to talk to the ancient reborn Alteans on her new home planet. Earlier in the day she’d tried to fist bump one of her new friends- a gesture that Matt still wasn’t done laughing over being completely Galra normal- and been challenged to a duel.  
  
They thought she was_ violent._ And loud. And they didn’t laugh at her jokes.  
  
If Keith and Matt silently agreed they knew exactly which juniberry garden would host their next bonfire, they didn’t say it. Instead, Keith braided her hair and Matt failed-but tried- spectacularly to feed them all.   
  
Romelle would end up coming to Daibazaal with Keith.   
  
For one thing Krolia adored her, and for another, with her acres of silken hair and quick laugh- not to mention propensity to throw punches that Keith could admit he was_ very proud_ of having passed on- Romelle was beloved beyond measure by the Blades.   
  
They were slowly becoming a clan- _Clan Marmora, the bright flame of knowledge_\- in their own right by that time, Keith thrown into the deep end of Galra culture and their golden honor.  
  
And then Romelle, Keith _and_ Matt in tow for once, had met Azrin.   
  
A hopeful for the Trials- stronger than even Antok had been in his prime, a proud son of Daibazaal from his clan tattoos to brutal fighting skill, a Galra Keith felt a vague personal relief hadn’t been around to rise through Zarkon’s nightmare army.  
  
Galra of old on their home planet were not the same creatures as the Empire had made. Swordplay in hand with poetry- an enormously complicated society who loved romance and strength, valued family above all and else, children precious and tradition valued.  
  
Keith hadn’t known furred Galra could_ blush_ that bright.  
  
And had to remember the Abyss’s lost future.   
  
Romelle’s bachelorette party, glitter in his hair, on Lance’s lips. Remembered flowers and futures, the girl who was as close to a sister as he could imagine marrying the largest, shyest Galra Keith had ever met.   
  
That was what he was thinking now, watching Lance’s face after three years, roll over impossible knowledge.  
  
If one part of the future the Abyss gave Keith could be true, was _all of it true?_ He’d been sure it _was lost._  
  
Shoulder’s square in Keith’s jacket, red sigils shimmering at his neck_ just enough _Keith could tell the very atmosphere was still _fucking with him, _Lance let out a little disbelieving huff of a laugh. “So, it’s a legend? Literally the same as an illustration in a book?”  
  
It was easy to blame exhaustion for the fact that he wanted to _swallow_ that laugh, but who was Keith kidding? Autopilot and pretending were easier. He’d always known who he was- what he wanted, what he loved.   
  
Lances tongue darted out to lick his bottom lip, and Keith had never been more glad he was on this mission _alone. _Acxa would laugh herself sick if she picked up on how _completely_ he was losing his mind, and she was _quintessence null.  
  
“_Can you, uh, say it again?” Lance asked, self-deprecation right on the edges of his voice. “The name in High Galran? I don’t know if you know this, but I’m actually a xenocultural professor? I don’t teach Galran studies anymore, but”-  
  
“Kral’ax’zyan,” Keith tried to cut in smoothly.  
  
The Nexus Home, the Place of Dreams, the Planet of a Ten Thousand Intersects- where Galran heroes went to dream true dreams and find what could not be denied in any lifetime.   
  


***   
  
Keith had either learned to sublimate on a whole new level over the last three years, or he _wasn't _angry at Lance. 

He seemed_ unshakable_\- familiar as home and distant as a star, a wall of warmth at Lance’s right hand like nothing had changed. 

Confident. Matter of fact and comfortable.  
  
It was the Abyss spitting out a beefier, even more_ impossibly_ handsome and competent version of Keith all over again. But of course, this time, Lance had only himself to blame for being leagues apart.  
  
Galran reverb echoed through Keith’s already fathoms deep voice, interrupting the nervous torrent of words out of Lance’s mouth. “Kral’ax’zyan.”  
  
He’d always been able to do that, Lance was nearly positive. Had hidden for years the subharmonic _gorgeousness _that marked him as Galra, like the honey-bleeding southern accent he only slipped into when positively hammered or half dead on his feet.   
  
“The dreaming place, right? Like the story of the moon knight and his princess?”  
  
Keith’s mouth twisted. “Only a _princess_ in the Altean version.”  
  
The laugh startled out of Lance before he could contain it. He _knew _that, the word for spouse in High Galran was genderless- _he knew that_\- but the joke laden in Keith’s revolted tone was as improbable as Red herself.  
  
Tiny, a smile ticked up Keith’s full lips as he poked at his right gauntlet, purple inlay coming to life under his fingertips.  
  
Lance, _god help him_, took the safe lull as an opportunity to stare. He’d never seen a blade suit quite like the one Keith was wearing before- not as torturous as the stealth version he’d still favored the last time Lance had seen him- but tight. Form-fitting. An actual chest pauldron that probably indicated rank, significantly slimmer than Kolivans.   
  
Armored_ everywhere, _but subtle to the eye_\- _the memory of bulky paladin armor made ridiculous in comparison.   
  
“I knew you were a professor,” Keith said, without looking up, flipping through a holographic display Lance couldn’t read.   
  
The wild urge to laugh again was climbing up his throat, somehow both longing and _hysteric_. “You…do?”  
  
Brow furrowing for half a second- Lance could remember _with his entire body_ his much younger selves fury at those unreadable expressions before he’d really known Keith- “Yeah. Shiro’s still pissed you outpaced him for the most popular enrollment slot.”  
  
“I did _not_ know that. Seriously? But he’s,” Lance waved a hand, “_Shiro_.”  
  
And there was the real smile, so wide Keith flashed _dimples _that changed his entire face. He wasn’t even looking at him and Lance was going to die on the spot, if he wasn’t already dead and this some bizarre, beautiful, afterlife reward for fighting a war when he was a teenager.   
  
Twenty four hours ago, he’d been grading _pop quizzes._   
  
“Likes to pretend he’s too Buddhist to be viciously competitive.” Keith told him, looking up to slant that bright violet gaze at Lance. “Like he didn’t beat every senior officers records that he could find.”  
  
“And then you broke all of them again,” Lance breathed, without thinking it through.   
_  
“Yeah,” _He answered, easy, soft tone completely at odds with his grin as he straightened, a smile that had _teeth. Which Lance absolutely did not think about. “_You know he used to take me street racing?”  
  
Instinctual, innate delight: the sun rising, an engine firing, a borrowed jacket warm around him. Lance shoulder to shoulder with Keith and unable to feel anything else.   
  
Hands tucked in his pockets, Lance rocked back on his feet, which_ absolutely did not_ give him an even better view of that smile. “He never would tell me how he found illegal races by the _Garrison- _there’s still nothing out there, and we’re stupid famous now_.”  
_  
Keith’s scrolling hadn’t paused, but he was paying attention, replied in a laughed breath. “_Oh_, it was Adam."  
  
“_Adam?_”  
  
The light was changing around them, dim as the purple overtook the pink-edged, gleaming clouds. Too fast, Lance distantly clocked, to be like any sunset he’d ever seen, as he watched the fading light shine against Keith’s hair.   
  
Atmospheric instead? Those clouds were quintessence, not water. And now that Lance thought about, there’d been no sign of a sun, or a system of planets, from orbit.  
A Galra legend- maybe it really didn’t play by any rules but it’s own.   
  
For half a second, the light flipped entirely to surreal lavender. Keith’s pale skin blued, eyes enigmatic black, a golden chain Lance hadn’t noticed before, tangled nearly green in his hair where it had escaped the neckline of the suit.  
  
And then all was dark.  
  
Unfathomable. Cave darkness.   
  
“Lance?”   
  
But Lance couldn’t reply- _because_-because he couldn’t see. It was nothingness- it was space_-falling-it was-  
_  
A fever-warm hand wrapped around his wrist.   
  
Keith’s grip was sure, fingers winding beneath his cuff. _Keith- _Keith was here and there was ground beneath his feet.  
  
Lance tried to focus on the feel of his hand, sword callouses across his palm that Lance no longer possessed himself. A rustle would have telegraphed the motion if Lance had been able to think clearly through the panic, but instead he startled as warm breath against his cheek and Keith’s voice reached him.  
  
“Lance, here.”  
  
A blink, and _gold_. Keith’s face swimming out of the terrifying darkness in front of him, Galra eyes lamplight and steady.   
_  
Real_, Lance thought to himself, trying to count down his racing breaths. He was on a planet, he could breathe, Keith was here with him.   
_  
Impossible_, the dark insisted.   
_  
There is nothing, and you are falling, There is only space, and you can’t breathe. There is no one and nothing- why would Keith be here? How? You broke that. There’s nothing- no air-no light-nothing.  
_  
From the beneath the roaring in his ears, a thousand miles away from the freight train of horror in his head, Red unspooled a memory years old, petal delicate that Lance could barely skin fingertips over. 

Pink,_ pink _light- insensate with pain- dying but okay because Keith-  
  
Keith’s voice, rough from shouting and less deep in youth, smoke over glass. “Lance._ Hey, no, no no no,_ don’t close your eyes. _Lance_\- Lance, sweetheart, show me your eyes?”  
  
Lance gasped, and opened his eyes.  
  
Still in the dark, a purpled nighttime sky that wasn’t so much above them as all around them, aching as a bruise. Gold light from Keith’s softly glowing eyes- softer still, Keith’s cheek beneath his hand.   
  
Lance _made _himself blink again, but there they remained.   
  
The soft rustle of Keith rubbing up and down his arm, other hand tangled together with Lance’s in a death-grip that said_ worry, _Lance’s hand cupping the scarred side of Keith’s face with shaking fingers. He didn’t remember reaching out.  
  
Head tilting in question, sharp shape of a cheekbone moving under his palm.  
  
Lance started counting his breathing in time with the rise and fall of Keiths chest.  
  
“It was warm water, for me.” Keith said simply, when Lance’s frantic intake of air had subsided to something nearer to normal, unashamed eyes on his. “Shiro splashed my face in a hotspring and I lost it, I thought it was blood.”  
  
“From,” Lance had to swallow twice before the words would come out, mouth sandpaper, “From the head wound, from Zethrid.”  
  
Keith nodded.  
  
It Lance who looked away first. Half-convinced the brightness of that inhuman glow was messing with him- but no, light was growing around them, a paler gold, lighting up the purple-pink flowers.   
  
Slow, their hearts began to glow.  
  
Slower, the shining lilac sands began to throw back the light, so faint it could have been imagined. The shimmer that had stuck to his arms: stronger in the dark, taking on light until the ground beneath their feet was bioluminescent blue.  
  
Head turned to see what he thought- but Keith hadn’t moved, was still looking back at Lance like he was the _only thing there.  
  
“Keith,” _He settled for saying, voice a ruin. Lance didn’t even know what he wanted to say.   
_  
Look, Keith, look at the magic. Look, Keith, you’re magic, please never ever stop looking at me.  
_  
Like it was nothing,_ like their decade of acquaintance had ever involved casual loving face touches, _Keith hummed in wordless reply before following Lance’s gaze.  
  
Turned his face into Lance's palm instead of taking a step back.  
  
A laugh, startled, broke against Lance’s skin. “They’re _kylath,” _Keith said.  
  
Dropping his arm and moving away- taking a warmth Lance had failed to noticed he was leaning into away- Keith knelt and carefully one-handed- _he hadn’t let go of Lance’s hand_, his heart beat,_ he wasn’t letting go- _ripped free one of the glowing flowers.  
  
“_Kylath_?” Lance repeated back, weakly. _  
_   
“On Daibazaal they catch and purify rain?”  
  
“_Keith_,” Lance managed to say more normally, “Are you telling me we should drink the mysterious glowing liquid? On the fairytale planet world?”  
  
With a huff, Keith tipped the delicate neon pink basin of petals to his mouth.   
  
“It’s only water.”  
  
Lance only stared back.  
  
“What?” To his credit, where six years ago it would have been a growl, Keith sounded like he was trying not to laugh. “I’m not going to turn pink. Drink the water, Lance.”  
  
“I didn’t think you were going to turn pink,” Lance lied, accepting the flower. Keith didn’t let go until it was practically touching his mouth. “Obviously, I was waiting for you to start glowing.”  
  
Keith rolled his eyes. “Drink the water, Leandro.”  
  
Lance drank, and failed completely to feel anything but greater thirst. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith, to himself: Cool, I'll just not hide at all that I'm in love with him. If he notices, cool. If he doesn't, nothing has to change, cool. Cool, cool, cool.
> 
> Lance: Keith is Grownup?! Keith is Beautiful?! Keith maybe doesn't hate me?! 
> 
> Also, tragically, Lance to Lance, about Keith: I WILL BE BURIED IN THIS JACKET, I WILL BE BURIED IN THIS MOMENT, KISS ME, STEP ON ME, CAN I BRAID YOUR HAIR


End file.
